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.
This post by David Coles, LSE Volunteer Coordinator, calls on universities around the world to stop promoting orphanage volunteering and offers some steps that universities can take to help put an end to orphanage volunteering.
LSE have created a pledge, which other universities in the UK are signing up to, agreeing not to promote or support orphanage volunteering on their campuses. Read more about the pledge here.