Volunteer Forum, Barcelona 2004 © Fòrum Barcelona 2004

A tradition with its origins in wealthy countries is volunteering overseas, the ultimate experience of non-financial altruism. It offers rewards which go beyond the fulfilment of helping disadvantaged people. The best known traditional agencies offering overseas opportunities are VSO in the UK and Peace Corps in the US. Ironically, the highly professional assignments offered by such organisations are the only branch of volunteering which is not currently enjoying a period of exponential growth. Career prospects and mortgage repayments are vulnerable to the standard two year absence on local pay scales typically demanded. The time-driven modern professional seeks to obtain assignments of ever decreasing periods of commitment.

This demand for fast-track overseas volunteering experiences has in its most extreme form created a new branch of the travel business known as "voluntourism" which arranges visits to developing countries for just a few weeks of engagement on a "project" together with the experience of living within a poor village environment. The "volunteers" typically pay the full costs of the expedition. "Gap-year" students are a core market for these packages with shorter term versions available for "vacation volunteering". There is great variation in these schemes; some offer sophisticated flexibility, whilst others reduce the volunteering component to the equivalent of an excursion.

It is no wonder that development professionals, wary from painful experience of the complexity of delivering successful development projects, fear that voluntourism is turning back the clock to a paternalist colonial era. VSO's interesting Global XChange programme pairs volunteers from richer and poorer countries in a fully reciprocal package where they visit each other's homes for similar periods, the focus being on the concept of global citizenship rather than any notion of assisting poor communities.

A more positive development than voluntourism is the adoption of the concept of international volunteering by the emerging middle classes in developing countries, leading to south-south assignments. This is particularly strong in India with its burgeoning numbers of medical, information technology and business professionals who are more than capable of delivering the capacity building potential of the best overseas assignments.

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