Is volunteer tourism ethical?

The whole idea of ​​making a profit exposing poverty and needs of a local community is obviously totally wrong. The idea of ​​helping the community with specialized people, with some expertise in their work, under the supervision of an expert in a multi-year relief program(as Andrews Tyler mention in the third movie) for that community makes sense. Simply gathering people from the street to pay important ammount, imagining that they will save through their unskilled work that community( in the conditions in which they have no specialization) is an nonsense and is made just for profit. In this conditions that community does not win anything. p.s. exista la noi vorba aia: "decat sa ii dai pestele deja prins gratuit mai bine invata-l sa il prinda singur!"

In every summer romanian bikers have a summer camp where they build homes for flood victims. It is a 10 days camp. Transport and accommodation costs are supported by each. There is a supervisor who prepares all the activities to be deployed and supervises all team members. As a training, all participants need to have minimal knowledge of house construction. They bring their own safety equipment (helmet, gloves, special boots, etc.) and sign for work safety standards.It is a multi annually program. For those families in the community that was hit by the flood is an invaluable help, often those families working side by side with motorcyclists

In my, opinion the right answer is the second. But the main problem with this kind of tourism is the result. According to facts lots of young students with money and a lot of time, enroling in such programs for resume and fun. Offering a short time help for a community by building a home or a school or take care for orphans is not the best option but the easy one. Instead of this, voluntourism can have better results if is address to highly specialized people who care about undeveloped communities. They can see the problems and produce a project or more, offering procedures and, eventually, funds to local authorities to implement their ideas. This kind of partnership is, in my opinion, the best solution. The solution involves both parties and, on long-term, can provide more satisfaction. So as the name says voluntourism is about helping and making this action efficient and continuous.

Whilst the conceptual core of this particular "humanitarian" framework is laudabile and the intention behind such projects might, indeed, be noble, the ethical and social implications of any activity that showcases poverty and third world hardships as an alternative to regular tourism are, obviously, reprehensibile and they must be clearly recognised as what they are: " humanitarian pharisaism and false empathy". The "Cambridge Dictionary" defines the activity of volunteering as a gesture to "offer to do something that you do not have to do, often without having been asked to do it and/or without expecting payment". Even if many of these so-called volunteers, do not, typically, expect to be paid for the work they do, the vast majority of them use this experience to bolster their own CV for career advancement, or simply to garner popularity on social media or traditional media. The main ethical point of volunteering is that the time you spend helping others is done for unselfish, uninterested reasons. If even the slightest personal concern hinders this belief, we cannot, in all honesty, define the activity the typical "tourist-volunteer" does as such, we must call it out for what it is; "a short-term job".

In my opinion, volunteer turism helps the comunities but it must be done in a way that would not damage the image of that comunity.