What did you learn about the potentially helpful and potentially harmful nature of community service? What do you think separates the two? How can you apply this to your break?
Blog posts must be 200-400 words, proofread, and void of common grammatical errors.
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During this meeting I learned about different ways community service can actually be harmful. For example while it seems like it’s a win-win situation to donate clothes or certain goods to a community it can actually be harmful to that community’s economy. One example mentioned in class was donating old clothes to a community which actually hurt the community’s textile industry because there was no need for manufacturing when clothes are being donated. This is harmful to the community because it is not helping them to become self-reliant and creates a “culture of dependency” as described by the article. This brought up the point that community service should promote long term improvement of the community instead of a short term solution. It is important to consider intent versus impact. While the intent may be good the impact isn’t always what is expected. To prevent a harmful impact it is important to listen to the community you are servicing and asking what they need, instead of assuming you know what they need. This could be applied to my break because rather than assume I know what the shelter needs it is important that I listen to those who live and work in that community as far as what work needs to be done. I will also try to help with projects that have more of a long term impact.
ReplyDeletePeople often have this idea that any form of volunteering is good whether it be going to work in a poor country, or serving breakfast to the poor, but this is not true. Last class, we read two articles that proved this point. For example, one might not think that giving something away to a person in a village could be bad, however it could potentially stir up immense jealousy in the village. And once you give something away to one person, more people want you to give them things. Sometimes, and often quite too frequently, people will volunteer to feel good about themselves, or to disguise a vacation. When this happens, often the work is completed in a shoddy manner leaving the community to deal with it. Something is not always better than nothing in the case of volunteering.
ReplyDeleteThe line between actually helping a community when volunteering and unintentionally harming one is a thin line. It is not the intention of the volunteer that separates the “good” volunteer from the “bad” one, but the way that they perform their service. The service must help the community in the long run. So, although donating supplies to a village in need might seem like a good idea, it actually might be hurting the local economy and preventing it from getting back on its feet. Volunteers should be aware of their surroundings, and always think about the bigger picture.
All of these issues apply to volunteering at the Best Friends Animal Society. We need to make sure to do work that will have a positive impact on the shelter in the long run and carry it out our work to the best of our abilities. I know that relationships develop all the time between animals and humans, but we need to remember not to favor one animal over the other. Even though it will most likely not lead to a political conflict like in a community, it will affect the other animals watching. But the biggest thing to remember is that we are there to perform work and are not on a vacation.
For me, the readings and discussions related mostly to the idea of a privileged person, such as myself and the other university students involved with Alternative Breaks, going into a foreign space and inserting their ideals, morals, and ideas for improvement. I focused mainly on how I can research my volunteering location and listen to their needs instead of pretending I have the answers for them. As I researched for the midterm, I came to acknowledge that my ideals may intersect with the ideals and goals of Playworks, but to really impact them in a long term way, I have to listen to their own needs from their lived experiences. The ideal of moral imperialism really stuck out to me. Someone from distinct privilege inserting their own moral superiority among people’s whose life paths and experiences and cultures could be entirely separate is not someone I want to be or ever become. To avoid that I can do extensive research about the programs with which I’ll work in the future and really engage with the people I work with in order to ensure that I don’t become a moral imperialist. That seems like a common flaw among many volunteers from many different narratives I’ve heard, and I would ideally like to avoid being one of the masses who don’t see the problems with that position.
ReplyDeleteThis lesson was most relevant to me when I thought about all of the concepts from a perspective of responsibility and humility. The reading on Voluntourism made a point to say that volunteers that plan to go abroad have the responsibility of ensuring that any organizations they plan to work with have a sustainable, positive relationship with the communities in which those organizations work. We are not doing something good simply by going abroad and lending our time; we must investigate the causes and organizations we want to work with to make sure we do not end up hurting the community we want to help. That reading also discussed having the humility to not assume that the place we come from is so wonderful that our time abroad must be solely beneficial to the “poor” people of another country. Volunteers abroad have as much, if not more to learn from the people of another country than they have to gain from us. In class, my group discussed in-depth the idea that volunteerism is a somewhat selfish endeavor; we always gain something from volunteering. We are always learning when volunteering. Additionally, with Alternative Breaks, we travel to get to our volunteer locations; for many of us, we will be seeing Atlanta for the first time, and we get some time to explore the city. The article and discussion made it very clear to me that in order to do helpful, rather than harmful, volunteering, we have to take the responsibility of really researching causes we want to work with, and we have to have the humility to remember that our time is not something we are selflessly giving away. The article on travel and ecological destruction was interesting, but I found it less applicable to my break. I learned that in travelling abroad, I have the responsibility to research where I am staying and to ensure that where I am staying did not destroy ecological habitats when it was built. This is not a decision that we make with our breaks, but it did help me understand why we stay in the places we do during our break.
ReplyDeleteWhile community service and volunteering has benefits it also has harmful effects. This last class taught me that not everything volunteer organizations do are helpful to the community they are in. A lot of times volunteers think that they are doing something worth while that will last a long time when in actuality it wont make that big of an impact. For example one of the articles that we discussed in class, “Voluntourism: What Could Go Wrong When Trying To Do Right?” by Daniela Papi, talked about how she herself painted a school once with other people and they painted it poorly in one day because they were tired. Well they spent over 200 dollars on the supplies when they should have really just given the school the 200 dollars instead because it would make a bigger impact instead of the painting on the wall. Another harmful effect that volunteering has is the act of giving things away. Many people think that they are helping out by giving the poor items that they normally wouldn’t have when in actuality it just makes things worse for them. This is because it can destroy local markets where items are usually bought as well as create community jealousy. Contrary to the harmful effects of volunteering, some of the beneficial ones are that it can help to start a movement to fix a social issue and it can also make more people aware of what is going on. It applies to my break because I need to be aware of what I am doing so that I can make sure that it truly will help out in the long run. Also, I should ask what the organization and community truly need help with instead of just assuming that what I am doing will be helpful.
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