-FAIR TRADE LEARNING-

What's the problem?

People are going overseas in hordes, often to volunteer. The travel and tourism industry has noticed this new "growth market," and conventional tour companies have started selling volunteer vacations. There are many problems with this. One of the problems is that the UN World Tourism Organization has estimated that in conventional tourism only 5% of tourist funds remain in communities that are visited in the Global South.

Now that doesn't exactly create a situation where communities experience economic development as part of volunteers' visits. And when companies reproduce standard practices for volunteer programming, that can happen easily. But what about the service volunteers provide? There's another problem.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of potential consumers, who see themselves as good people, who know relatively little about community and international development – are interested in purchasing a global service experience. One of the easiest things to sell is the perception of having done good – to a person who sees herself as good and is unfamiliar with the place she visits.

Tour company incentives are to focus on the happy consumer rather than collaborative community development.

Does anything work?

Yes. Fair Trade Learning is a community-driven response to the market pressures of international volunteering.

Nonprofits, community members, university faculty and staff, students, and volunteers are contributing to the conversation and supporting the advance of Fair Trade Learning at http://criticalservicelearning.org/2013/09/18/fair-trade-learning/. Be part of the conversation.

We can build better global partnerships together.