This post is part of the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative’s month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering, under the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips. The campaign ends on June 1st, International Children’s Day, with a call to volunteer travel organisations to remove orphanage trips from their product offerings. Authors of these blog posts and articles urge people to sign the petition to put an end to orphanage volunteering. You can sign the petition here.
The post, from Intrepid Travel, lists six reasons not to visit or volunteer in orphanages. The post highlights the research from UNICEF and others that exposes the reality that most children in orphanages have at least one living parent. The post also points out the many social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and developmental benefits to growing up in a family versus an institution. “Tourism actually fuels [the] supply” of orphans, says Intrepid Travel.