Almost a year ago, BucketOrange Magazine published on the dark side of voluntourism. In particular, child traffickers who essentially manufacture orphans by visiting vulnerable communities and convincing parents to give up their children on the promise of an education and better living standards. Traffickers sell these children to ‘orphanages’ and change their identities by falsifying documents meaning that families are no longer able to locate their children. Many charities and NGOs refer to such children as ‘paper orphans’ as they are not genuine orphans.

The demand for volunteering experiences from Western countries in recent years has fuelled a boom in orphanage tourism globally.

According to Unicef, Australia is among the top financial supporters of such orphanages in many South-East Asian countries.

Orphanage tourism, or voluntourism, is big business. According to ReThink Orphanages, in the last
10 years, the volunteer tourism industry has blown up and is now worth a whopping $173 billion globally. Over 8 million children around the world, who have at least one living relative, are living in orphanages.

Orphanage tourism has been described as a new form of modern slavery. Leigh Matthews, founder of ReThink Orphanages says that one of the main drivers behind the explosive growth of orphanages is an increased demand from Westerners who seek volunteering opportunities rather than an increase in the number of orphans.

Of course, tourists and volunteers are unaware that they are actually doing more harm than good by visiting these orphanages which is why public education, awareness and strong leadership by government is urgently required to help put an end to this insidious problem.

Fight against orphanage tourism gains traction

In recent months, the campaign to end orphanage tourism has gained much-needed momentum. Yesterday, Projects Abroad, one of the biggest voluntourism companies in the world, announced that it is severing ties with all overseas orphanages.

In September this year, World Challenge, an organisation dedicated to sending high school students to volunteer overseas pledged that it would end its association with orphanages.

The reality is that Australia has played a prominent role in fuelling the rapid increase in paper orphans for many years with 14% of all Australian schools and more than 50% of Australian universities sending student volunteers and fund-raising efforts to support overseas orphanages.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says:

It disgusts me that well-meaning students seeking to help vulnerable children overseas might be unwittingly signed up for scam volunteer programs and orphanage tourism that risks further child exploitation.”

In an effort to address the issue, Simon Birmingham has asked the Education Department to work with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on a range of policies to be discussed at the next COAG Education Council in December this year.

Introduction of a Modern Slavery Act in Australia

Orphanage tourism has garnered media attention recently after several submissions to the Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia addressed the problem and a number of prominent figures have called for urgent action.

West Australian senator Linda Reynolds is pushing for orphanage tourism to become an internationally recognised form of modern slavery.

Submissions to the Inquiry from Cambodian Children’s Trust, Forget Me Not, ReThink Orphanages, and Hagar International recently prompted a day of hearings dedicated to orphanage tourism.

Tara Winkler, co-founder and Managing Director of the Cambodian Children’s Trust, gave evidence about an orphanage director lining his pockets with donations from well-meaning visitors and overseas donations, as well as physically and sexually abusing the children in his care. While this director profited, children suffered from such gross neglect that they were forced to catch mice to feed themselves.

A parliamentary submission by Kate van Doore, Secretary of Forget Me Not and a law and human trafficking expert at Griffith University, describes children who are deliberately kept malnourished in an effort to facilitate donations from foreigners:

The orphanage was receiving approximately USD$6000 per child per year from foreign donors with no efforts made to reunify the children with their biological families,” says Kate van Doore.

Often orphanages are utilised by paedophiles posing as volunteers and visitors to access vulnerable children,” says Kate van Doore.

The global orphanage crisis is not fuelled by an increase in poverty or the number of orphaned children – both of which are in decline in Cambodia and in many of the other developing countries where sham orphanages are rife – but by overseas donations. Such donations from international organisations, universities and schools support traffickers and the proliferation of orphanage tourism.

What is the government likely to do about it?

It seems the Government has finally got wind of the issue, largely thanks to the efforts of Senator Linda Reynolds who has been advocating for the rights of paper orphans since last year.

There is now strong support among Committee members to ban Australians from visiting orphanages overseas as an immediate priority, ahead of a proposed Modern Slavery Act, which could take another 12 months to implement.

The committee is penning a letter to the Attorney-General, the Hon. George Brandis QC, and the Minister for Justice, the Hon. Michael Keenan, recommending an immediate ban on Australia’s involvement in orphanage tourism. Exactly what constitutes ‘involvement’ is yet to be established. It could refer to funding orphanages, to visiting them, or both. Exactly how the proposed ban will operate in practice is also unclear.

It is possible that the Committee is now considering the implementation of a more transitional model, such as that advocated by Kate van Doore. Along with other experts, she has cautioned against immediately cutting off support to overseas orphanages from Australian schools and universities, instead urging them to ask the right questions, such as whether the orphanage has a reintegration program, before they support an orphanage.

It is also important that such support and resources are redirected to aid agencies and non-government organisations actively working towards locating the biological families of trafficked children and reintegrating them with their communities. An increased focus on supporting vulnerable communities and keeping children within those communities is also critical.

What more should be done?

Legally acknowledging the connection between modern slavery, child trafficking and orphanage tourism as well as raising community awareness about the importance of selecting legitimate volunteer programs are vital first steps.

Part of the solution requires Australians to be informed travellers and to find legitimate ways to volunteer overseas, namely by supporting community-based programs and working with organisations that locate and reunite paper orphans with their families. These include Australian charities such as the Cambodian Children’s Trust, Forget Me Not, and the Born to Belong Foundation.

An important protective measure should be to require Australian volunteers to obtain a Working With Vulnerable People card before departure.

On a global scale, due to of our particular responsibility for contributing to the problem, Australia should also be pursuing a vigorous strategy to bring pressure on relevant foreign governments that have permitted sham orphanages to operate. By withholding foreign aid, we can take immediate steps to ensure that this destructive practice is stamped out.

There is also a real need for more targeted legislation that acknowledges the severity of the harm inflicted on children by this exploitative form of modern slavery. An amendment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that specifically deals with orphanage tourism is one possible approach.

Where we find ourselves 

Orphanage tourism is not yet formally acknowledged as a form of human trafficking but thanks to consistent lobbying by a few key experts, we are well on our way to leading the charge for change in this arena.

It is not often that Australia finds itself a world leader in something that has the potential to make a profoundly positive change by taking strong action to end the abuse of vulnerable children and prevent thousands of others from reaching the clutches of child traffickers.

Through legislation, awareness and public education, we have a real opportunity here to set the standard on the international stage and to spearhead a movement that contributes to ending modern slavery in our lifetime.

Let’s hope the Committee provides further, in-depth consideration of this issue in their final report and recommendations.

More on BucketOrange Magazine

Find Another Way To Feel Better About Yourself ‘Do-Gooder’: The Narcissism Of Voluntourism

Further Information

• Think Child Safe
• Smartraveller
• Better Care Network
• Australian Council For International Development
• Australian Volunteers International – provides opportunities for skilled Australians to contribute to the Australian Government’s aid program.
• United Nations Volunteers – (UNV Program)
• ReThink Orphanages – a group of non-governmental organisations that campaign to end the exploitative trade of children. They advise anyone considering volunteering overseas to research carefully before deciding to support assistance programs and orphanages.
• Forget Me Not – an international NGO originally established to fund best-practice orphanages. It has since changed its focus to finding and returning paper orphans to their families. Forget Me Not also assists children to reintegrate with their community.
• Cambodia Childen’s Trust – focused on reuniting paper orphans with their families and communities.
• Next Generation Nepal – reunites orphanage-trafficked children with their families.

Help us to educate the public about the far-reaching and destructive impact of supporting orphanage tourism by sharing this story with your friends! 

Voluntourism – a combination of volunteering and tourism – has become an incredibly popular way to travel and experience new destinations. But the industry has a dark side. Rising to prominence as a by-product of privileged, mostly Western, tourists wanting to ‘do good’ and tick a box on their CV, voluntourism is increasingly being recognised for what it is – a major problem with a global impact.

What is voluntourism?

Also known as volunteer tourism, volunteer holidaying and volunteer travel, voluntourism is the convergence of international volunteering and tourism.

Basically, it is a rapidly-expanding industry that involves travellers volunteering their time for worthy causes or charities. Commonly this involves work in underprivileged communities in developing countries for social or environmental purposes. The ultimate goal of many programs is to engage in sustainable community development or conservation work that alleviates poverty and restores buildings or other structures or assists children in orphanages (among other things).

The practice of voluntourism is heavily promoted as an alternative way to gain an authentic travel experience. For many volunteers, this creates an artificial expectation of responsible tourism – ‘do good’, and ‘feel good’ while you do it.

Increasingly, however, questions have been raised around the ‘misconceived idealism’ of voluntourism and whether the practice is purely an exercise in narcissism for travellers. More often than not, rewards for host communities are not commensurate with the swift ego boost for volunteers and the overall profit travel companies derive from organising these activities.

Why is voluntourism a problem?

Sustainable development projects are among the most problematic ways to volunteer overseas.

Work that could have been completed by local skilled labourers is given to tourists with no experience in building infrastructure, in aid of giving them a warm and fuzzy feeling and the illusion of altruism. In many cases, host communities are left with dilapidated and unstable structures that are useless within a few months.

Is voluntourism fuelling the paper orphan trade?

Arguably the worst way to spend time volunteering overseas is at orphanages.

While Australia does not allow unskilled tourists or volunteers to have unchecked access to vulnerable children, voluntourism gives well-intentioned, unskilled and unqualified overseas visitors unfettered access to children.

Despite the documented negative psychological and emotional effects residential care can have on children, the number of orphanages has increased in many developing countries. This is to meet the rising demand from tourists even though the overall number of genuine orphans has decreased.

Increased demand for such volunteering opportunities has seen the emergence of a new business model. Owners of sham orphanages travel to poor communities and convince vulnerable families that their children would be better off in a boarding school with access to education.

Once recruiters sell children into an orphanage, documents are falsified and their identities are changed. Due to name changes, families are no longer able to locate their children. Many charities and NGOs refer to such children as ‘paper orphans’ as they are not genuine orphans. Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana and Uganda are among the countries worst affected by the paper orphan trade, with UNICEF estimating that of the
8-million children living in institutions globally, more than 80% are not genuine orphans.

According to The Guardian, Nepal’s bogus orphan trade is being fuelled by voluntourism:

It is a business model built on a double deception: the exploitation of poor families in rural Nepal and the manipulation of wealthy foreigners. In the worst cases, tourists may be unwittingly complicit in child trafficking.”

The shocking result? Families in rural areas are manipulated into giving up their children who are exploited to generate money for a profit-driven system, either by their residence which is used to encourage orphanage donations from tourists, or by being trafficked. The fees orphanages charge volunteers line the pockets of owners, while children are often abused and live in appalling conditions.

The orphanage profits in many ways from the presence of these ‘paper orphans.’ Some orphanages encourage volunteers to come and spend time with the children, profiting through the fees they charge and lower care costs due to the free labour that volunteers provide. Others have their ‘orphans’ dance or sing to encourage donations.” – The Conversation.

Unfortunately, if you travel to developing countries with the intention of volunteering at orphanages without doing your due diligence, you are feeding into a corrupt system that does more harm than good. It’s a misguided attempt to support poverty-stricken communities that often becomes more of an exercise in narcissism than it does in promoting the common good.

Western volunteers have, perhaps, unwittingly endorsed the commodification of children with money and ignorance.

Of course, many of us don’t even realise this problem exists. While Save the Children and UNICEF have campaigned against voluntourism for years, the issue has failed to gain the traction it deserves.

According to Save The Children:

Child protection specialists have also raised concerns about the presence of short-term foreign volunteers in residential care institutions and the potential for them to create confusion around identity and culture.”

Illegality of voluntourism

Voluntourism attracts over 30,000 tourists to Nepal each year.

With widely publicised volunteering programs, few foreigners consider whether it is actually legal for them to do so. In its report on The Paradox of Orphanage Volunteering, Next Generation Nepal reports that international volunteering is illegal for many tourists.

Clause 19 of the Immigration Act 1994 states:

(1) A foreigner having obtained a visa as a tourist or his family member
pursuant to these Rules shall not be allowed to work, with or without
receiving remuneration, in any industry, business, enterprise or
organisation during his stay in Nepal.

(2) A foreigner having obtained a visa pursuant to these Rules shall not be
allowed to carry out any work other than that for which purpose he has
obtained the visa.

Day-to-day, however, most visitors do not apply for work permits. The dichotomy between the official position and what happens in practice has presented additional challenges to combating unethical voluntourism programs.

A way forward

The devastating effect that well-meaning efforts can have on local communities is a harsh reality. But it is one that we must come to terms with if the damaging impact of voluntourism, including the fraudulent trade in paper orphans, is to end.

If you are considering volunteering your time and labour overseas next year, make sure your expectations are realistic. Research legitimate and ethical programs dedicated to recruiting skilled volunteers which can, and do, have a positive impact on local communities. Avoid visiting and donating to orphanages as this perpetuates a cycle of child trafficking.

If you wish to volunteer with children, choose organisations that are dedicated to locating and reuniting paper orphans with their families and communities. The best volunteer programs provide support, opportunities and skills development for families and children within their existing community.

The fact of the matter is that as long as a market for voluntourism exists, paper orphans will continue to be created and exploited. To disrupt this fraudulent trade, perhaps it is time that we find another way to feel better about ourselves.

Further Information

• Australian Volunteers International – provides opportunities for skilled Australians to contribute to the Australian Government’s aid program.

• United Nations Volunteers – (UNV Program)

• ReThink Orphanages – a group of non-governmental organisations that campaign to end the exploitative trade of children. They advise anyone considering volunteering overseas to research carefully before deciding to support assistance programs and orphanages.

• Forget Me Not – an international NGO originally established to fund best-practice orphanages. It has since changed its focus to finding and returning paper orphans to their families. Forget Me Not also assists children to reintegrate with their community.

• Cambodia Childen’s Trust – focused on reuniting paper orphans with their families and communities.

• Next Generation Nepal – reunites orphanage-trafficked children with their families.