![\"Kenyaorphan\"](\"https:\/\/travindy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Kenyaorphan.png\")
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B<\/span>ack in 2010 I was fed up with living in the United Kingdom. I wanted an adventure<\/a>. I wanted to do something more socially orientated \u2013 something \u201cworthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n I did a bit of research and talked to some friends, and ended up finding out about an organization that ran orphanages and educational centers in Kenya<\/a>, Thailand<\/a> and Indonesia<\/a>. They were looking for Co-Directors, long-stay volunteers who would run one of their centers for at least a year. There was no salary, but accommodation and food was provided \u2013 and, so the conversation went \u2013 you would get first hand experience running a small non-profit and volunteering at an orphanage.<\/p>\n This sounds perfect!\u00a0<\/em>I thought.<\/p>\n The opportunity fit my budget, timeframe, the kind of commitment I wanted to give, and the things I wanted to learn. My friends were amazed at what I was doing. \u201cYou\u2019re so brave\u201d was something I heard often. The only person who questioned my choice was my Dad.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat skills do you have to be the Co-Director of an orphanage, Anna?\u201d<\/p>\n I shrugged his question off. I had a lot of great transferrable skills. They just needed someone smart and motivated. And I wasn\u2019t prepared to let a small matter<\/em> of relevant experience stand in the way of my life plans.<\/p>\n So, I got on a plane and went to Kenya. A white 29-year-old British girl with no qualifications in child care, child development or international development. I had no knowledge of Kenya, no knowledge of any languages spoken there, no understanding of the culture. The only vaguely relevant experience I had was a one-week teaching-English-as-a-foreign language certificate I had gained 10 years previously.<\/p>\n And somehow, I thought this was a good idea.<\/p>\n As you may have guessed this is a cautionary tale. I was completely, completely<\/em> unprepared for just how bad an idea it really was. I spent a month in Kenya before I was transferred to another orphanage in Thailand<\/a>\u00a0where I spent a further five months. Although I was supposed to be there a year, I left halfway through. Why? Because during the experience I realized I was so under-qualified and unprepared that my best and most responsible recourse was to leave.<\/p>\n I did, however,\u00a0learn a huge amount in that short time. To ensure you don\u2019t make the same mistakes I did volunteering at an orphanage, I\u2019d like to share some of these with you.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t, at best, you\u2019ll be pretty useless, and at worst you could be putting yourself and others at risk. I discovered this when I was faced with a situation where one of the older boys at the orphanage was threatening one of the younger girls with a hunting knife. She had accused him of coming into her room at night and sexually assaulting her. I had no idea how to handle the situation. This incident made me wonder what on earth I was doing there. The children didn\u2019t need me. They needed trained staff and social workers who spoke their language. There is no place for unskilled volunteers in working with vulnerable children.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just about you. Once you complete a project you go back to your home country and your real life, while the children and communities you have engaged with stay put. I didn\u2019t think about this when I left the UK. I was so wrapped up in what the\u00a0experience would be providing me that\u00a0I didn\u2019t even consider the impact I would have on the children I would be working with.<\/p>\n As it happened, the children were really sad when I left. Some were even angry, because volunteers tend to make promises they don\u2019t keep like staying\u00a0in touch or coming back to visit. I had promised to stay in Kenya for a year and left after a month. Vulnerable children shouldn\u2019t have to deal with that kind of disruption in their lives.<\/p>\n Sometimes you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know. There are many things I knew I didn\u2019t understand when I went to Kenya \u2014 such as language and culture \u2014 but I was prepared for that and interested in learning; however, there were other things I hadn\u2019t considered,\u00a0mainly to do with the social and economic causes of why children end up in orphanages and why that\u2019s a problem. Also to be considered is why those things meant it was even more of a bad idea for me to be doing what I was doing.<\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t know then that I know now is that orphanages should never be a long-term solution for children. There\u2019s over 60 years of research that demonstrates that growing up in residential care such as orphanages can be harmful for children\u2019s health, development and life chances. So orphanages also shouldn\u2019t be used as a solution to larger social issues such as poverty or access to education.<\/p>\n Most of the children at the orphanages I worked at had parents, or some living family members (as is the global norm). They were there because they came from marginalized communities. I witnessed two children being separated from their father to come and live in the orphanage so they could go to a better school in the city. While I am a big believer in education, I also believe that a child should have a right to live in a family and<\/em>\u00a0have access to education.<\/p>\n The trauma that I witnessed those children go through in being separated from their parent was real and distressing. Separating children from their families should not have to be the only solution for them to be able to access better life chances. The more you support orphanages, the more you support this as a solution to challenges facing marginalized communities. We can \u2014 and should \u2014 do better. Instead, support organizations who provide rural education, income generation for families, foster care or provision of social workers.<\/p>\n In the context of the orphanages I worked with, this was very apparent. The founder didn\u2019t trust local staff as she thought they would steal from her, hence it was only foreign volunteers who could be in charge of finances and key decision making. The children had few role models within their own community to look up to.<\/p>\n On a larger scale, and what child protection experts are concerned about in many countries around the world, is that volunteers make orphanages look like an attractive option for families. Volunteers bring money and resources, and are often assumed to be well-educated. Therefore, they are more likely to send their children to orphanages.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very common to read volunteer stories where they visit an orphanage and find it half-built, with children in dirty clothes with little food. They are moved to help such organizations because they are more \u201cin need.\u201d<\/p>\n This is an understandable response, but actually doesn\u2019t make sense in the long-run.<\/p>\n The organization I worked for was badly run, and as a result there wasn\u2019t enough money to give the children nutritious meals or pay for school supplies. I felt compelled to work 16 hours a day for six months to try and see how things could be improved.<\/p>\n Realistically, I shouldn\u2019t have been working with that organization at all. It would have been much better to give my time and money to a well-run organization that might have be able to give those children better support services.<\/p>\n In addition, badly run organizations can put people at risk. I saw this both with the children (see Point 1) and with the volunteers. Shortly after I left Kenya all the volunteers at the orphanage were arrested because they were volunteering on the wrong visa. They spent a night in jail, had to pay a fine and were then deported. The organization did nothing to step in to support these volunteers during that time.<\/p>\n All of this (and more) is why I am so grateful for the opportunity work with the Better Care Network<\/a>and Save the Children UK<\/a> to support their initiative to discourage volunteering in orphanages. Better Volunteering Better Care began\u00a0in 2014, and is a global movement working with advocates from a range of backgrounds and sectors to raise awareness of these issues. Better Volunteering Better Care also seeks to support positive alternatives to orphanage volunteering<\/a>, as there are lots of (better) ways to support positive change.<\/p>\n For ideas on responsible volunteering abroad, check out this advice<\/a> from Next Generation Nepal \u2013 an organization working with vulnerable children in Nepal. Watch these videos<\/a> from Learning Service and read up on these articles<\/a> on Globalsl.org.<\/p>\n To learn more about how to support vulnerable children and families, explore the work of the ChildSafe movement<\/a>, discover Kinnected\u2019s work<\/a> in Australia and find out about what Alternative Care Uganda<\/a> are trying to achieve.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a little weird to be campaigning to stop people doing something you once did yourself. Some of my friends have tried to reassure me about my experiences, telling me that \u201cit worked out in the end\u201d and \u201cnow you\u2019re trying to put things right.\u201d To be frank, I don\u2019t think it works that way. Vulnerable children and communities shouldn\u2019t have been put at risk just so that I could learn a few lessons and start making better choices with my good intentions. And it didn\u2019t really work out in the end \u2013 the children I worked with are still in the orphanages, with volunteers still arriving all the time. I\u2019m no closer to changing that situation than I was five years ago.<\/p>\n What I do hope can change, is that more people become aware of the problems with orphanage volunteering before they make the decision to book a trip abroad. That\u2019s one of the reasons why this month, Better Volunteering Better Care is working with bloggers across the world to raise awareness of these issues. There will be a different article published everyday for a month, in the run up to International Children\u2019s Day on June 1st. We\u2019re also calling on volunteer travel organizations to stop offering orphanage placements as part of their product offerings.<\/p>\n If everyone who reads this can share at least one blog post in the month \u2014 if not more \u2014 there\u2019s a chance to make a tremendous impact. If something shocks you, if you learn something, if something\u2019s interesting or appalling, share it to your networks and raise awareness across global sectors and bring about the change required to #StopOrphanTrips. Don\u2019t forget to include the hashtag!<\/p>\n Share this article on its original page by clicking this link<\/a> and use\u00a0the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign the Avaaz petition<\/a> calling for travel operators to remove orphanage volunteering placements from their websites by the next Responsible Tourism day at the World Travel Market in London in November 2016. Don\u2019t forget to share it and include the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips, too!<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a volunteer tourism operator who is happy to #StopOrphanTrips, then please let us get in touch \u2013 we\u2019d love to highlight your support of the campaign. For more information, visit\u00a0www.bettervolunteeringbettercare.org<\/a>, and if you want to learn more or get involved, email\u00a0volunteering@bettercarenetwork.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anna Mckeon, the Coordinator of Better Volunteering Better Care, tells the story of how she went from eager volunteer at an orphanage to dedicated campaigner to end the practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":11022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[675,138,14,535],"tags":[158,134],"yoast_head":"\nThe\u00a0Problem With Orphanage Volunteering<\/h2>\n
Here are the top five lessons that I learned\u2026the hard way.<\/h2>\n
1. As a volunteer, you MUST have appropriate skills.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. As a volunteer, you have a responsibility to think of the long-term impact of your actions.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. You need to find out what you don\u2019t know before you go.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Volunteers can undermine local initiatives for change.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. It doesn\u2019t make sense to support badly-run organizations.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Working For Positive Change<\/h2>\n
Get Involved<\/h2>\n