ARC Review: Ours to Explore by Pippa Biddle

Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power and the Paradox of Voluntourism by Pippa Biddle

Non-Fiction

248 pages

Publisher: Potomac Books

Publication Date: 1 June 2021

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My Thoughts

I received a free eARC from the author/publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ours to Explore is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking non-fiction titles I’ve had the pleasure of reading in the past few years. It explores the intersection of privilege, power, and voluntourism.

Voluntourism is broadly defined as a travel experience in which you spend some, or most of your time volunteering. The idea is that wealthy/Western people can spend part of their holiday doing good for the community they visit. The problem is that statistics and anecdotes show that this form of volunteering does not, in fact, really help local communities at all.

Voluntourism is the offspring of colonialism, and is really just the modern day form of it, wherein predominantly white people travel to distant lands to “help” the poor, backward local communities out of the goodness of their hearts. Biddle specifically links voluntourism to the “white saviour complex”, as well as Evangelical Christian ideas of volunteering/proselytising. It is a result of privilege, and believing that good intentions are enough to help a community. Whether this mindset is a result of being wealthy and white, or whether it is driven by a ‘divine purpose’ makes little difference to the outcome, which is only positive for the one doing the “giving.”

Voluntourism actually harms those communities it purports to help. For a start, many voluntourist travel packages are for-profit, run by companies who keep most of the profits for themselves, instead of investing in the local communities. Voluntourism takes away communities’ power, and causes them to depend upon charity, no matter how harmful the outcomes are. Instead of encouraging sustainable development, directed by community needs, with local input into the process, the communities voluntourists visit are being disenfranchised.

Biddle goes on to explore three types of voluntourism in more detail: medical, educational, and orphanage voluntourism.

I was particularly shocked and disgusted by the practices surrounding medical and orphanage tourism. Medical voluntourism allows young, untrained volunteers to assist, or even lead, surgical procedures and operations. Many of which are performed in awful, undersupplied conditions. Many a young med student goes overseas to practice procedures on poor, coloured patients who have few other options. Ethics be damned. The author relates an episode where she was encouraged to perform a lumbar puncture on a small child without any anaesthesia, or any training whatsoever. If that image doesn’t make you shudder deep in your soul, then I don’t know what will.

Orphanage voluntourism is a whole other beast. Because there is a demand for such experiences, children are procured to allow voluntourists to act out their little saviour fantasies. Meanwhile, there are few protections for the children, some of whom are not even orphans. They are often abused, and the “donations” they receive are funnelled elsewhere, because the next batch of voluntourists want to see and experience the same thing. They want to ‘help’ the children, get a good poverty porn image for their social media page!, and feel good about themselves for helping those less fortunate than themselves. Except orphanages are harmful places for children to grow up, resulting in attachment disorders and other mental health disorders in the children. The lack of stability they need is not found in an orphanage setting, but because of the continuing cycle of voluntourists dropping in, other solutions that would benefit the child are not explored.

The book is not all criticism. There are some suggestions about ways to ameliorate the harms done by voluntourism. But the overall message is this: voluntourism cannot ethically continue as it has been up until now.

This is an important, and necessary book. I would highly recommend it to all those with an interest in volunteering, and those interested in modern colonial power relations between the West, and the ‘developing’ world. For anyone interested in human rights, and social commentary, this is a perfect addition to your shelves.