Volunteering abroad: helping children or ourselves?

Continuing our series by former volunteers in orphanages, Dillon Hooker looks back on her trip to Malawi as a school student, and asks: was I helping children, or helping myself?

 

In 2012, I travelled to Malawi for three weeks to volunteer in my school’s annual summer project, which involved children and teachers assisting with the building or renovation of schools and orphanages. The students paid for their own trips and fundraised and collected donations to take to Malawi, such as clothing, books, pens, and toys. The students spent short periods of time at each institution, usually around one to two days.

I learned a lot from my time in Malawi, but my trip made me question whether our work was really helping those in need – or whether it was just helping foreign students. Can short-term volunteering without experience do more harm than good?

At the Orphanage

Our school bus arrived at an orphanage, located in a small village in southern Malawi, to be welcomed by singing children and exhausted buildings. The orphanage workers smiled as they thanked us for our school’s work over the past years.

The orphanage was home to around 40 children of different ages. Some children were too young to attend school and spent the days at the orphanage. The older children attended school during the day and returned to the orphanage in the afternoon.

During our two days at the institution, we were responsible for refurnishing the dilapidated buildings. We had taken a one-day course in bricklaying in England to help us prepare for building a teachers’ block. However, the materials we learned to use and the methods we practised were not of any use in Malawi. The local people used completely different methods and materials and had to re-lay our bricks and slow down to show us how to do it.

Tasks also included disinfecting rooms to eradicate bug infestation, cleaning clothes and bed sheets, and painting walls. We also assisted the women working at the orphanage with cooking meals and carrying water.

The Children 

As we could not communicate with the children due to language barriers, I only learned of their stories from the carers and teachers who could speak English.

One little girl, who was HIV positive, was abandoned by her mother. One orphanage hosted a brother and sister whose mother had contracted HIV and later died from the virus. The children were brought to the orphanage by the father. Another child had cerebral palsy and was institutionalised due to a need for full-time care and assistance. These are but a few of the stories I learned of while visiting a number of institutions.

Hearing these stories through a third party meant I was never able to understand how these children were feeling or how they were affected by being separated from their families. I also did not know how the unfamiliar faces of volunteers who come to their small villages for a couple of days, and never return, impacted them.

Helping children or helping myself?

When I left Malawi I could not wait to tell my friends and family back home the stories I had heard. But was my volunteer experience in Malawi really about how I felt? Had I really made a difference to these children’s lives?

Going to Malawi taught me a lot and exposed me to issues such as poverty, social exclusion, and stigma. However, as high school students, my friends and I were too young and unskilled to be able to fully understand what these children needed and how to respond effectively. Spending a day with a child with HIV may have been an interesting experience for me, but what difference did I really make in that child’s life?

And to what extent did our work actually help the local community? Donating the bricks and building materials would have been more efficient and beneficial to the Malawian builders.

Volunteering is not just about going to a developing country and adding our own imprint. It should be about building and maintaining long-term commitments so that we can make a positive impact, even in just one child’s life. My experience has showed me how short-term and unskilled volunteering can be harmful if it is just a way for us to feel like we helped someone in need.

 

Does your school or university organise volunteer trips to orphanages? If so, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us at info@stahili.org.