Rotterdam, 14 October 2014
Volunteer Correct enlists volunteers to address excesses in Cape Town’s volunteer industry
It may seem contradictory, but foundation Volunteer Correct launches their own volunteer program – to investigate the volunteer industry in Cape Town. The goal of this brand new foundation is to promote transparancy in volunteer tourism – also known as voluntourism – since commercial motives run amok in what seems a charity environment.
It looks pretty straightforward: when volunteering, someone who is well off helps someone who is worse off. If you believe in solidarity, this seems legitimate practice. However, reality shows that is a lot more complicated than that. In terms of complexity, the international volunteer industry equals the financial sector: the diversity of players is enormous, and the same goes for the commercial interests at stake. Intuitively, people think that ‘help’ is the territory of foundations and charities, but this is not the case.
Media scholar Reinier Vriend researched South African voluntourism for years, and his findings are incriminating: it turns out that international volunteering is dominated by commercial companies, information for prospective volunteers is murky on purpose and local counities often don’t profit from the work done. Do you pay a company thousands of Euros to dig out turtle eggs on a beach in Costa Rica, or do you join a non-profit in Zambia? When you’re faced with the choice, economic interests are unclear.
Joined by film makers Kuba Szutkowski and Brechtje Boeke, Reinier Vriend started Volunteer Correct, a foundation to promote transparency and accountability in international volunteering. All three board members believe that media can be used to effect change. To make sure that there will be more clarity for the hundreds of thousands of Westerners who set off yearly to a destination abroad, they decided to focus on one voluntourism destination. This resulted in Project Cape Town that is to start in February 2015. During a 2,5 week period, a research and production unit manned by Volunteer Correct´s own volunteers, paired up with South Africans will investigate the local volunteer industry. The intervention will result in a portal with research based information on the local volunteer industry as well as a feature length documentary capturing the whole process.
Volunteer Correct believes that by the act of bringing things out in the open, players in the voluntourism industry will have to respond constructively. But the need for accountability doesn’t just apply to the industry. Apart from demanding accountability from the voluntourism agencies, Volunteer Correct also stresses that volunteers carry great responsibility when selecting their volunteer work. Reinier Vriend: ¨We know that with the time and capacity we have, we can only research one destination. But our example can be followed by prospective volunteers themselves¨. So ideally Project Cape Town kills two birds with one stone: the articles and documentary clips that result from our research will force volunteer organisations to become more transparent. At the same time, prospective volunteers are urged to ask critical questions during their search for volunteer options.
Though Project Cape Town is Volunteer Correct’s first project, Reinier Vriend sees a future purpose for their organisation. He believes that their local approach can potentially be fitted to aid other volunteer destinations that face similar issues as Cape Town: “Although every volunteer destination is different, issues among them show strong similarities. I can see a Project Manila or a Project Lima in the future. Transparency can only help an industry that is centred on aid, and that is the same around the world. We will start with Cape Town, but I love to see where this wave is taking us.”
Project Cape Town fully commences in February 2015. News about the program and about other activities can be obtained via the following channels.
The web: volunteercorrect.org (Dutch: nl.volunteercorrect.org)
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/volunteercorrect
Twitter: @Vcorrect
About Volunteer Correct and Project Cape Town:
Volunteer Correct is founded by Reinier Vriend, Kuba Szutkowski and Brechtje Boeke. All three have an academic and a media background. Affiliated with the University of Amsterdam as lecturer in Media Studies, Reinier carried out research and published about voluntourism in Southern Africa. Reinier shared his insights with his friend Kuba, who works as film maker and is owner of a audiovisual production company. Looking for likeminded people, they found Brechtje Boeke. Educated as visual anthropologist and active as documentary filmmaker about development aid, she connects to the expert fields of both Reinier as Kuba.
