Perceptions of the Role of Short-Term Volunteerism in International Development: Views from Volunteers, Local Hosts, and Community Members

Abstract

Background. Short-term international volunteer trips traditionally involve volunteers from high-income countries travelling to low- and middle-income countries to assist in service-related development activities. Their duration typically ranges from 7 to 90 days. The city of La Romana, Dominican Republic, receives hundreds of short-term international volunteers annually. They participate in activities aimed at improving conditions faced by a marginalized ethnic-Haitian community living in bateyes. Methods. This qualitative analysis examined perceptions of short-term international volunteerism, held by three key stakeholder groups in La Romana: local hosts, international volunteers, and community members. Responses from semistructured interviews were recorded and analysed by thematic analysis. Results. Themes from the 3 groups were broadly categorized into general perceptions of short-term volunteerism and proposed best practices. These were further subdivided into perceptions of value, harms, and motivations associated with volunteer teams for the former and best practices around volunteer composition and selection, partnership, and skill sets and predeparture training for the latter. Conclusion. Notable challenges were associated with short-term volunteering, including an overemphasis on the material benefits from volunteer groups expressed by community member respondents; misalignment of the desired and actual skill sets of volunteers; duplicate and uncoordinated volunteer efforts; and the perpetuation of stereotypes suggesting that international volunteers possess superior knowledge or skills. Addressing these challenges is critical to optimizing the conduct of short-term volunteerism.

Effective practices of international volunteering for health: perspectives from partner organizations

“…They ask that their feedback be taken seriously by volunteers and volunteer organizations [ 23 – 25 , 27 , 31 ]. One study that surveyed VPO staff and community members in the Dominican Republic reported a “misalignment of the desired and actual skill sets of volunteers; duplicate and uncoordinated volunteer efforts; and the perpetuation of stereotypes suggesting that international volunteers possess superior knowledge or skills” [ 33 ]. Lasker identified “mutuality”, or the opportunity for all people involved to be learning and developing skills, as one of the most important principles for effective volunteering [ 2 ].…”

Using a Health Equity Lens to Evaluate Short-Term Experiences in Global Health (STEGH)

“…This often results in host communities hosting separate, uncoordinated efforts that limits their overall scalability and impact. As an example, clinical STEGH are particularly vulnerable to such impacts on outputs and outcomes if local context and coordination is not considered; one study found that a hospital in the Dominican Republic welcomed STEGH on week to month-long experiences to perform everything from tubal ligation surgery, to dialysis services, to mobile primary clinics, to research and public health education [15].…”

“…Nutrition advice is compromised because the food supply is inconsistent and parasites return, since shelter and hygiene remain inadequate. Escaping poverty remains difficult as entrenched economic and political systems limit job opportunities and community development; perhaps corrupt authorities even target this specific community because they know there are goods to be had-medicines and other charitable items left behind by the visiting team [15].…”

Developing and validating learning domains, competencies, and evaluation items for global health clinical immersion practicums for graduate‐level nursing programs

“…Accepted principles of global health initiatives, especially those for student learners, began to emerge. These principles, which include early partnership between host and university personnel (Chavez et al, 2010;Middleton et al, 2014;Powell, Gilliss, Hewitt, & Flint, 2010), evidence of measurable sustainability goals (Loiseau et al, 2016;Melby et al, 2015) and rigorous predeployment orientation for students (Cherniak et al, 2017;Harrison, Logar, Le, & Glass, 2016), began to thread through global health curricula. From these principles, eight graduate-level learning domains were derived.…”