In this article, the author, Yuanyuan Kelly, shares her personal story of a voluntourism project in Cambodia in which she participated when she was 16 years old. Kelly describes an orphanage visit that was organized for the volunteer group as part of the program and how she declined to go after seeing a flyer reading “Orphans aren’t zoo animals” with a picture of a child in a cage.
The article explains the ways in which orphanages in Cambodia have become a money-making business which continue to recruit more “orphans” in order to profit from foreign volunteer donations. “With any kind of tourism or voluntourism opportunity in a developing country,” says Kelly “the question must be asked: what is the greater, long-term impact that I'm having on this community? What do the people in the community actually need? In this case, what Cambodia doesn't need are people paying for a trip through child exploitation.”