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 shines a light on orphanage voluntourism, which the author says ranges from “intrinsically distasteful” to “horrific.” The author discusses fake orphanages, or “briefcase orphanages” which are used as income-generating operations and are damaging to children, along with the practice of orphanage volunteering itself. The author offers some alternatives to orphanage volunteering that support local communities.