At my church, every year the youth group goes on a work trip. Usually the trip is to a drivable location in the US, but every four years or so they will do an international trip. The work usually involves renovating housing for poor people. Obviously, the kids could just raise money to donate to house renovations, but the trip is only partially to benefit the people with bad housing; it’s just as much–probably more–designed to get the kids interested in volunteering, to give them an opportunity to work together, and to give them direct experience working with people in need. The international trip my daughter went on was the most effective in this regard, because the poverty was so abject.
We did not fool ourselves into thinking that these trips were significant credentials for college admission, and our kids did not write essays about them. But I think they were valuable additions to local volunteer work.
But doing good is admirable. I hate how CC easily assumes volunteering is padding. The question is, are they working or gawking?
My kids were into it, finding a college that valued and promoted service was important to them. They did continue to vol through college and still do.
They also did two church sponsored trips, both build/repair in rural US areas, both profound experiences where they worked hard, lived uncomfortably, interacted wonderfully with those they helped. But yes, on top of local work over the years. They learned a lot about those they helped. It wasn’t, “Oh, how fortunate I am.” In one case, the kids earned the money over two years. The other was just about $125 each.
If they had said, “Mom and Dad, for $X thousands, I can go to a 3rd world nation!!!,” I would have redirected their attention. In fact, their hs did offer a not-cheap Central America trip and doled out 168 hours of “service credit,” which included their sleeping and fun hours. I think they only “worked” 3-4 hours/day. Not my cup of tea.
“I hate how CC easily assumes volunteering is padding” - in this regard, as in others, it’s important to keep in mind that the CC world is a bubble. A bubble that in oh so many ways doesn’t resemble the real world Just as not all college-bound kids are obsessing about the Ivies, public Ivies or elite LACs, not all would-be volunteers are thinking about resume padding.
My daughter is going back to Peru again this summer to work with kids. Since she spent five months in Spain in 10th grade, she’s pretty fluent in Spanish. She’s going with her cousin and my sister - it’s through their church. The church sends six groups over each year, and they take a lot of supplies with them. My daughter didn’t write about last summer’s trip in her essays, and she’s already admitted to college, so this summer’s trip is certainly not padding.
My son’s high school sends five groups of 25 boys each summer to an extremely impoverished county here in the US to build homes for the poor. They travel by Greyhound bus. They raise all the money to buy supplies to build the homes. To date, they have built 23 homes and should complete 2 more this summer. His mom and I sat with him to discuss the importance of this endeavor and his role in it. By the end of our discussion, we came up with a few thoughts…
He will not highlight this trip among his ECs in his college application;
He will not write an essay about this experience in his college application;
He will take time to reflect on the existence of abject poverty in a place not so far from home and what he can do to help change that.
Maybe idealistic, but better than just making sure he has enough suntan lotion.
Will they have some fun on their trip? Absolutely. Will they earn 50 service hours? Why not? Will some of them get into mischief? Probably. Not worried about that.
It just seems to me that the whole experience is a complete waste if these kids don’t observe and learn about the world around them and the extreme poverty that exists everywhere. These kids will be our future leaders and they will be the ones who can make a difference.
Two of my kids did do one of these summer programs that combined adventure travel with an element of service. I had no illusions that my kids were going off to do life-saving/changing work, and my kids did not either, and neither used the trips in any way to position themselves for college apps. What they did get was an opportunity to learn some skills that they might not otherwise have learned (my husband and I are not campers), while seeing another part of the world from a perspective that they might not otherwise be able to. The trips were well planned and chaperoned, staying in tents and hostels, or small village homes, right with the people of the country they were visiting (rather than at a luxury resort or in a tourist area). Contact home and electronics were barred or limited so they could truly be ‘present’. Yes, they saw a lot of poverty, but also happiness and joy in people with much less in the way of material possessions.
What did I want them to get out of it? Perspective on the world, confidence to engage with it outside their comfort zone, and some independence. Maybe a jumpstart on becoming adults who will do good in this world. Could they have done the same thing nearby? Probably, but it was our choice to allow them to chose to go further.
What did the people of Peru and India get out of it? That’s a more difficult question, and one we’ve talked about as a family. I hope the areas they visited saw some small economic benefit, and that the young children they engaged with at schools in each country enjoyed meeting the American teenagers and exchanging some small lessons in each others languages. Is that enough? It was for us.
I think what people are talking about is ‘volunteering as an EC’ where the kids are doing it specifically to look good on a college resume. Based on my experience, most church focused missions are not like that, these aren’t youth trips to have privileged kids tell beautiful stories about the smiling faces of the poor kids when they visited, they go there to try and do real good, and it is an ongoing committment, and there are other groups who do the same kinds of things. Several of the church groups I have been around specifically told the kids who went that this isn’t about their ego or themselves, but rather was about helping those they are serving, and that they shouldn’t try and gain anything out of what they were doing other than the satisfaction of showing God’s love to the people they were helping.
The problem is there are ‘opportunities’ like this that quite honestly are a vacation with well off kids ‘slumming’ , either to impress someone on a resume or to show how they ‘really have depth’, when in reality they could give a crap less about the people they are visiting or supposedly helping. This is not uncommon, I have friends who belong to/run charitable groups, and they are very wary these days of taking on high school students, being from an area where the kids are very college focused and generally from well off backgrouds, the ‘perfect’ ec chase is on…they get far too many who see this as an opportunity to pad their resume,then do little to nothing. It is sad, because for example, I know a local kid who had his heart set on joining the local volunteer rescue squad, and they basically had decided not to take any more teen members for a while, because they had had such a bad experience (I knew one of the people who was a lieutenant in the organization, and put a good word in for the kid, and they let him join quietly a couple of months later). There is a difference between someone doing something wanting to do good and also hopefully to learn something, and some privileged pain in the *** who wants to do it because it helps them, problem often is figuring out who is genuine and who isn’t.
“Just think what some charities could do w a several thousand dollar donation from families who pay for these programs so their kid can be Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess.”
Ouch! I couldn’t agree more… but I hesitate to verbalize it in my community. I wish I could get away with saying this to the next person who tells me about their glorious spring break trip to Africa.
@STEM2017 that sounds like a terrific program. I could really get behind that.
We used to get brochures from these groups when our kids were in HS. One I remember more clearly was called Experiments in International Living or something like that and it cost several thousand dollars (not including airfare!) for the participants to be “deeply immersed” in local culture by staying part of the time with a local family, drinking tea with them, planting a tree or two, etc.
Who is getting all that money? Certainly not the local family or community.
As with so many things in life, I think that motivation/intent is key: if you are in it primarily to do good, then what you are doing – wherever it is – is dignified and honorable.
Where pretense is involved, good things might still be accomplished, but the experience loses much of the real gifts of sacrifice: sharing with others, learning from and with them, and carrying with you the pride and satisfaction of doing right by others.
@greenwitch Experiment in International Living is a non-profit and it has been around since the 1930s. It was revolutionary when it started because there really weren’t formal programs designed to encourage cross-cultural experiences and because it very quickly developed scholarship funding to make the experience available to a wider group of students. Think about the world in the 1930s and the visionaries who realized the importance of exploring it and understanding other cultures. EIL can also claim some credit for influencing the founding principles of the Peace Corps.
There may be “for profit” groups that don’t meet your approval, but please do some research before painting EIL with the same brush as the ones you dislike.
Full disclosure: I attended an EIL program in Switzerland in the 1980s.
Anyone thinking of volunteering as a way to look good to colleges has the wrong motives because they are essentially using people for their own gain-never a good motivation. How many students have volunteered in foreign countries and not reported it to colleges? Those that refrained from using the people in such horrid circumstances by not reporting their volunteerism had the right motivation and probably did some good. Others, nope.
I know that the reason my middle son became interested in helping people was our trip to South Africa when he was 10. We toured a township in Cape Town. He couldn’t believe the conditions people there live in. The little kids flocked to him. They loved his watch! Anyway, 11 years later and he knows his calling in life is to help Syrian refugees (based on two other volunteer trips he made in 2014 and 2015). So our “selfish” tourist trip in 2005 has led our son on an amazing journey. I wouldn’t change a thing.
@GnocchiB - the fact that EIL is non profit is nice and all but it proves nothing. The NFL is non profit, and so are all the church groups that sponsor international volunteering.
I’m glad you had a good experience with EIL but I’m just a bit suspicious about a program that charges $5600 for two weeks in Morocco with part of the time with a “homestay family” YMMV.
Our daughter did a service trip to Africa through our church. We pondered the benefit of it beforehand, and whether the cost was “worth it”—can a kid really do any good in that time frame? We even spoke to some friends living in rural Africa before she went. We came to the conclusion that the primary benefit of the trip was less about the service a middle class white girl could do in Africa and more about the knowledge she would bring back that would, long term, benefit those people, and support those in that community doing the real day to day work. She came back with experiences and stories that have transformed the way she sees the world in terms of basic human rights, the benefit and cost of development, delivering health care (and the cost of not delivering it), art and culture, women’s issues, the sheer scale of poverty, etc. This in turn transforms the way she chooses, the way she spends her money, the way she votes. Not that much of this can’t be done by volunteering in the US, but being taken entirely out of one’s comfort zone and culture and seeing things from a completely different perspective can be life changing. She felt very small when she came back. She also had a much more realistic view of what it means to “change the world” and a much more informed approach to finding her place in it. She’s looking into service work as a career and is very thoughtful about how best to contribute to the world she lives in. We have yet to see where that takes her, but it certainly will be informed by her experiences in Africa. As far as what she accomplished for others? Hopefully the suitcase of healthcare supplies she carried over made a difference for a few people in that community, and her other efforts weren’t a waste. It’s hard to measure sometimes. I think we do need to be truthful about what service trips actually accomplish, in the real world and on college applications.
My H used to be a sucker for everyone in his church who sent out invitations to ‘sponsor’ their mission trip. Finally I had to sit him down and ask “Do we really need to donate money so Susie Q can go to New Zealand for the summer?” “Our family doesn’t get to go to New Zealand this summer” “Why can’t Susie Q go work with the homeless downtown in our own City?” Enough said
I am more than happy to donate my time, money or supplies to a local effort, but I draw the line at ‘sponsoring’ kids to go to Costa Rica or wherever.
@Parentof2014grad, you express that well. If only other kids could. But many see it as exotic, don’t have their life directions and sensitivities change. They don’t feel small, one cog in a huge effort; they feel large, not humble.
Just as not all college-bound kids are obsessing about the Ivies, public Ivies or elite LACs, not all would-be volunteers are thinking about resume padding.