Why Voluntourism is Not What You Think It Is, with Aisling Ledwith
It's a multibillion dollar, worldwide industry.
Thousands of people, often seniors, go overseas to help in person with orphanages and other aid organizations.
But what if it's not all it appears?
Today we're pulling back the curtain on the dark side of orphanage tourism.
What appears on the surface as a positive, hands-on experience to help out those in need, in fact typically has major structural issues, driven by malicious purposes.
Aisling Ledwith, Senior Advocacy and Campaigns Officer at Lumos, is here to help shed light on the issue. Lumos presses governments to reform care systems and show how children can be safely reunited with families, instead of being left with often exploitive institutions.
What are "institutions"? Basically another word for orphanages, but in fact, in an "orphanage," typically 80% of children do still have at least one living parent. The children end up there for all kinds of reasons, but cannot possible get the type of care and support that all children should have. And that's even if the institution has otherwise well-meaning intentions.
Children need a proper caregiver, for one-on-one care and for attention. In other words, a parent.
So what do we do if there is no parent?
How you can use your skills, your money and your heart to make a difference without causing unintended harm?
Aisling talks to us about what child trafficking is, and the frequent cases of exploiting children to attract donations.
One major red flag: it shouldn't be easy to get access to children. It should be something where there are background checks and gateways in place, for their protection.
So our takeaway today from this important and powerful conversation is, do your research, think about where your money is going, how you can best help, and how can we work towards strengthening the best outcome of all: that children have loving, committed, full-time individual caregivers to raise them as we all want to be raised.
Resources from today's episode:
Lumos - https://www.lumos.org [https://www.lumos.org]
Rethink Orphanages - https://rethinkorphanages.org [https://rethinkorphanages.org]
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https://weareoldpodcast.com/ [https://weareoldpodcast.com/]
and send me your thoughts and suggestions at weareoldpodcast@gmail.com [weareoldpodcast@gmail.com].
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