Voluntourism and Intercultural learning

Most of the volunteers I've met are not here because they think they can save the world with their unselfish actions. Many of them want to experience a new culture and learn how people in different parts of the world are living. We call it intercultural learning. It is a kind of exchange of cultures between the two parts, in this case the east and the west. Most of us are living in Indian host families and almost all of us have to work with Indian people in our projects. We are learning from the Indians and they are learning from us. The ideal would be for both parts to discover new ways of seeing and handling things as well as to learn to see the similarities that unites us all as human beings.

However, it is not guaranteed that this ideal is reached every time. There is always the risk that volunteers that stay only for a very short period of time only manage to discover all the differences in the cultures, widening the gap between people instead of making it disappear. This is of course possible to happen even with people that stay for a longer time, but do not have a mind open enough to take in the new culture.

It is not easy all the time to decide what can be seen as a part of the intercultural learning and what can not. The learning should function both ways and requires much patience and flexibility from both parts. Sometimes I feel that the volunteers efforts to be as open minded as possible are being slightly abused. We try to tolerate and understand so many strange and weird things that we sometimes are fooled to go too far with our open-mindedness. Being flexible doesn't mean that we have to accept everything that is said and done to us. Sometimes some volunteers are exposed to weird sex-discussions (some Indians having a wicked picture of our open minded culture) and it is also common that we are asked of money or donations for different purposes. And of course it works the other way round too. We have to accept and respect the host families' ways of living and their different habits. Even though for example being lightly dressed can be seen as a part of our culture it doesn't mean that we can jump around in too revealing clothes in the families.

We are constantly balancing on the thin string of intercultural learning. Sometimes you get very annoyed and sometimes you manage to learn something new. From my point of view we volunteers are the ones that still have to play the more flexible part, since we are the ones who came here and wanted to learn about a new culture. I also want to think that me being here also widen some Indian people's views of this global world we are living in. Even if I can't make any big difference with my project I would like to think that only seeing me and talking with me as a foreigner, coming from the other side of the world, helps the people here to learn and see the world outside their own village. 

Sometimes I think that the intercultural part is even more important than the helping people-part. For many volunteers the experience abroad has the reverse effect than they did expect. Being so full of naive excitement to help the world's poor in the beginning they later realise how the experience in fact helped themselves more than anyone else. Being a volunteer in a different culture in a country far away from home helps you to get rid of prejudices and become more mature and independent. Maybe that could even be seen as one of the main aims with voluntary service for younger people.