This post is part of Better Volunteering Better Care’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 blog post by Annie Wendel, on the American Gap Association website, explains why orphan-based tourism is damaging and offers some best practices in how to engage responsibly in international volunteering.