Ethical issues with volunteering abroad?

language before he went?

The vast majority of volunteering courses are little more than pre-packaged self-esteems boosts for those involved. The focus is mostly on the enjoyment of the individuals involved, not the actual help of others. It's profit-motivated and as has already been said often takes money from the local economy, as well as not giving local workers a job who would likely be more experienced, in need of the money, and will be happier to work for their own community.

In reality, for effective volunteering, you need to be somewhere for a long period of time, have a lot of skills and experience that can be used productively and work hard. Foreign long-term and effective charity work often involves administration, organisation and sitting in front of a computer for the majority of the day. Often it's in grief struck places, where natural disasters have meant it's impossible for those countries to cope alone. It can be tough, but it's also very rewarding.

Volunteer courses in which you pay thousands to touch and feed elephants and the like aren't helpful. They are little more than a placebo that can often do more harm to communities than good. If you want to volunteer and help in a beneficial way, expect to it to be gritty, tiresome and hard work. Don't ever volunteer for anyone but a charity either and ideally you'll need some skills that can be effectively translated to specific work. Treat it like a job, not a holiday.

Also, do a lot of research into who you are volunteering with. Don't choose someone like Real Gap for the reasons above.

In lots of cases, it's much better, cheaper and more ethical to just go on holiday, instead of the pretence of volunteering.

This.

That said, there is nothing wrong with, for example, going to Guatemala for 6 weeks to learn Spanish (which is ridiculously easy to arrange yourself without paying anything to an agency) and helping tutor kids with their English homework, doing odd jobs at an orphanage etc. while you are there. But people who go to Africa to 'teach English' for 3 weeks or so are doing more harm than good. Very, very few (if any!) short term volunteer projects abroad are worthwhile from an ethical perspective.

To add onto what people have already said...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/orphans-cambodia-aids-holidays-madonna

Also you'll find if you go onto a charities UK website they will say they only hire locals because it benefits the charity more.

Thats awful Its the kind of thing I was really worried about.

Hiya,
I was just wondering if anyone knew anything much about the ethical issues of volunteering abroad. I worry that, although i want to do good things I'm actually making things worse (taking jobs from loacals, doing work - such as teaching- while unqualified when really a qualified person is needed, changing the culture etc. etc.) and the main benefit goes to me in 'having an experience'. My brother was living in Guatemala for about 6 weeks learning spainish and he was saying that his feeling was that the gap year volunteers who came, building schools for instance, were just taking jobs away from local people. He was also saying that his feeling was that gap year programs were mainly just a fundraiser for companies/charities.

I just wondered if people had any experience of this sort of thing and what peoples thoughts were - I really don't want to be having more of a negative impact...