1)Sometimes highly motivated and confident voluntourists get to a project in another culture and think that they are going to jump in and change everything for the better. This is a great desire, but a little elitist without even knowing it. Sometimes the projects are even really successful, and they don’t really have a place for the volunteer. Or the projects don’t have the resources to organize the volunteer, and volunteers don’t understand it takes huge resources to organize them.

2)The language and culture barrier are huge. I know that when I volunteered in Rio de Janeiro, I kept getting frustrated that I wasn’t given clear tasks and I wasn’t “doing” anything. I realized that they wanted me to participate and observe and understand before they could really let me do something. What did I, little American college girl know about this photography project in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. (I wrote a post about this, and you can see it here http://tinyurl.com/l25yoe).

I agree with you also on the time issue. After my experience, I believe that at least a year is needed to actually make an impact, because for the first 4-6 months is just getting used to the culture, language, and project.

With all that said, voluntourism did open up my eyes. I have continued learning about and working with the issues that I learned and experienced from my volunteering experience. I think it opened up my eyes to not only life in Rio and Brazil, but also my life back in the states.

When I was literally volunteering, did it make an impact on the project? No, probably not. But step by step, it made an impact.