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This Alliance magazine feature, examines how global funding systems have unintentionally sustained institutional care for children by financially incentivizing orphanages, even though most children in these settings are not orphans and have living family members.

This opinion article argues that while Christian churches have historically supported orphanages and residential care as a way of living out their faith-based call to care for vulnerable children, growing evidence suggests this model is often harmful and should be rethought.

This article argues that visiting orphanages in Kenya during holidays or as part of voluntourism, while seemingly charitable, can actually harm children by perpetuating a system that values short‑term attention over stable, family‑based care and sustaining institutionalisation driven by poverty rather than genuine need.

This article from NPR describes some of the ways in which international volunteering has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and calls attention to the criticisms the industry has received, including in regards to orphanage volunteering.

"Orphanage volunteering and the industry that has emerged to support it have contributed to a system in Kenya and other parts of the world that creates a demand for institutions and children," writes Michelle Oliel of Stahili in this opinion piece for CNN.

In this opinion piece for ABC News, Kate van Doore describes her experience of establishing an orphanage in Nepal in 2006, to later learn that the children in the home's care had living relatives and that many had been recruited to the orphanage.

This episode of Foreign Correspondent from ABC News in Australia exposes the "ugly truth" that donations and volunteer efforts of Westerners, including Australians, often drive an exploitative orphanage industry in developing countries (in this case, Nepal).

This article accompanies an episode of Foreign Correspondent from ABC News Australia entitled 'Paper Orphans.' It tells the story of Devi, a 10-year-old girl in Nepal "forced to pose as an orphan" who is being reunited with her family.

"Orphanage tourism turns children into cash-generating commodities subject to the usual economic laws of supply and demand," says this article from New Europe.

"Orphanage tourism turns children into cash-generating commodities subject to the usual economic laws of supply and demand," say Peter Singer and Leigh Mathews in this commentary piece for Project Syndicate.