The Center for Responsible Travel (CREST) has released a guide helping travelers figure out how to minimize “unintended consequences” of giving while on vacation. Travelers’ intention to help, interact and learn are all good, but sometimes “misguided contributions can perpetuate cycles of dependency, cause corruption, burden communities with unwanted or inappropriate donations, and require recipients to spend time and resources to handle “gifts” they didn’t request or cannot use,” according to CREST.

CREST asked a dozen tour operators and tourism organizations who work with local community projects how they respond to …

Most volunteer tourists are eager to go out into the world to help serve communities. Equally important to doing good is traveling good. As a voluntourist, you need to consider how you can be responsible toward the places you travel to and toward the local host organizations you volunteer with.
Traveling responsibly in a foreign country involves evaluating the social, economic, and environmental implications of your travel. Experiencing cultural diversity is one of the main reasons why you travel and you need to make sure that these differences are respected, maintained …

If you search for volunteer vacations on the Internet, you often encounter third party organizations that set up travelers with different volunteer projects around the world. These are generally full service organizations that do all the work for you — finding a volunteer project, providing lodging and meals, providing you with language lessons if you want, scheduling excursions, etc. It’s definitely easier to have someone organize everything for you so you can get right to work when you step off the plane. But you pay for these services.
There is a …

Many companies that run volunteer travel programs or vacations charge fees, sometimes high fees, for the experience to volunteer. Some travelers are puzzled by why they have to pay to provide free services. The short answer – generally because the local organizations and projects that you volunteer abroad with have limited resources. They are seldom able to subsidize your trip or cover the costs of hosting you. These costs include housing, feeding and transporting.

Photo by dan4th
Besides, often when someone questions this cost, it reveals their underlying bias toward volunteer travel …

Voluntourism opportunities are becoming more accessible as the combo of traveling and volunteering goes mainstream. A number of tourism boards and visitors bureaus in the U.S. and around the world are offering voluntourism programs of their own to capture this class of travelers and to increase visibility and participation for their partnership community service programs. Idaho Visitors Bureau launched its voluntourism program last week. The program with its accompanying website highlights opportunities available in the arts, environment, outdoor recreation sites, and others. The website with its rustic graphics is appealing …

The keys to a successful volunteer vacation or voluntourism involve a few basic considerations: What excites you? What kind of impact are you looking to have? Where do you want to go? How will the project you choose benefit the local community? (There are less reputable charities/companies that overstate responsible travel claims.) To address these considerations, you will need to do some personal self-assessment and research.
Personal Self-Assessment
An honest personal assessment is key because it defines your trip — the type of trip you’ll take, where you will go and your …