Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism by Pippa Biddle

 *I received a free e-ARC of this book in exchange for my review.  All opinions are my own.*

I read Ours to Explore over the weekend, and I can NOT stop thinking about it. 

Short version with no context: I'm going to incorporate it into my next post-pandemic travel course. (To Costa Rico or Ecuador, through a travel provider who uses locally owned businesses.)

Slightly longer version with a hint of context: I also can't stop thinking of this episode of Friends.

If you've ever gone on a mission trip or included a service learning project in a travel course, you might want to read this book.  Actually, you SHOULD read this book, but you might not be ready to re-evaluate your choices.

Pippa Biddle looks at the Western history of combining supposed "good works" with travel and finds that many of these trips have historically done as much damage (if not more) as good and shows that even when we have a strong desire to help, we can cause hurt.  

So if you think the only thing that counts is your intention or your calling without looking at the financial and human cost, you should probably skip this book.

Anyone else who wonders how a single week's commitment to a construction project, an orphanage, or a medical center by unskilled and untrained visitors can actually do any good should read on.

If you've ever wondered why you're asking your congregation or community to raise $4000 for a trip where only $400 of the total go toward the people in need because the rest is spend on transportation, lodging, and sightseeing for your neighbor or congregant, this is a great book for you.  After all, if your community will donate $4000, why not just send the whole amount to the local project and your neighbor stays home?

This is the issue of voluntourism--combining vacation, travel, and volunteering--and should not be confused with NGOs like Doctors Without Borders or mission trips by actual tradespeople trained in the work they're traveling to complete.

In 2014, Pippa Biddle wrote an article that highlighted the problems with sending unskilled teenagers for a week of "work" to build a library and volunteer at an orphanage.  She saw the tradesmen her group worked beside undo a days' worth of poor construction efforts by the teenagers and redo it on their own.  She was later told that the volunteers were fed better than the children they were there to aid.  The one "good" that came from the trip is that the volunteers, those untrained teens, felt really good about what they did.

Pippa's article spawned further research on her part (that became this book) as well as other articles that looked at the ethics of sharing pictures of social media of orphans and medical patients without permission or consideration as well as the ethics of volunteering to pad your medical school application. You can see a sampling of that type of article below:

I can't stop thinking about this book because it is a LOT to process, and Pippa doesn't shy away from pointing out the racism, colonialism, and paternalism used to justify many of these efforts.  (Even when, maybe especially when, they're faith-based efforts.)  She also shares some solutions in how to turn our strong desire to help into actual help instead of merely feel-good moments or social media posts.

My only real complaint is that the copy I received used all lower case letters for the acronyms for the volunteer organizations and NGOs that were referenced which made for jarring reading.  Hopefully, that's just a problem with the e-ARC and will be fixed in the final version of the book.  Additionally, because this is a footnote heavy book, the e-book version is a bit awkward; Kindle doesn't handle footnotes well.  This may be easier to read in print.