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. The post offers a brief profile of the response the author received to her documentary film on orphanage volunteering and her thoughts on how to promote positive change.

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. The post explains why backpackers and young people on their “gap year” should avoid volunteering in institutions and offers alternatives for those looking to volunteer.

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. The post describes the ethical dilemmas involved with short-term volunteering, particularly volunteering with children, and how to apply child-centered ethics to short-term volunteer projects.

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. The post offers a brief explanation as to why most children in “orphanages” are not orphans, what happens to those children, and a list of ways in which people can help address  the situations.

In this video, a boy in a shelter in Athens, Greece shares his story of migration to Europe and the trials and challenges he has endured.

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. The post poses the question “would you be happy for a volunteer, who has no experience and has undergone no background checks, to help out at your local school or nursery?”

In this piece for the Huffington Post Blog, Phil Smith, an adoptive father, writes about his and his wife’s experience with a program Concurrent Planning, run by a specialist team in London, UK. 

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. In this blog post, Anna McKeon from the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative, writes about her time as an inexperienced international volunteer in orphanages in Thailand and Kenya and shares the top five lessons she learned about volunteering and why it is harmful to volunteer in child care institutions.

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. The post serves as a follow up to her research on “responsible” tourism companies.

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. The post explains why orphan-based tourism is damaging and offers some best practices in how to engage responsibly in international volunteering.