Short response
ENGL 203 Spring 2018-Short Response 2 Assignment 1
ENGL 203 Spring 2018-Short Response 2 Assignment 5
ENG 203: Response Paper 2 (10 points)
1. Read the article on the next page (2-3).
2. Then write a response paper.
a. Your response paper should be between 300 and 400 words.
b. It has to include your response/reaction to two key points from the original article.
c. It has to have (a) an introduction, and (b) two body paragraphs. A conclusion is recommended, but is optional.
d. The response should be justified with specific examples and logical analysis.
e. Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, left justified, in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, with 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins. Paragraphs should be indented.
f. You have to type your name, QU ID, course-section, teacher’s name, and due date in the left upper corner of your paper:
Mohammad Yousef
12345678
ENG 203 – 110
Peter Murphy
March 20th, 2018
g. Your paper is due in class as a hard copy on _____________
h. You have to submit your paper to SafeAssign before class. Plagiarism is a serious academic dishonesty and would result in F for the assignment or for the course.
i. If your SafeAssign score is 15% or more, your teacher will check and determine whether the high score is due to actual plagiarism or due to other reasons such as title of the article.
Voluntourism
Tina Rosenberg, 2018
Every year, millions of people from wealthy nations travel to poor countries, hoping to do good. University students want to spend a school break or part of a summer giving back; perhaps even to improve their CV. All seek personal growth, connection to those less fortunate, and the satisfaction of making a difference. “Hope of Life” a charity in rural Guatemala has such scouts who work in mountain villages, looking to save infants The number of orphanages has been growing, according to the UN. The reason is demand from a huge rise in tourists willing to pay to work in orphanages. This is known as orphanage tourism or “voluntourism”. The aspiration to help the most vulnerable children is a noble one, but the booming business of “voluntourism” sustains practices and institutions that actually do harm not good.
Many of these missions and charities establish orphanages for children. Wealthy countries consider orphanages harmful for their own children, as research has found that the best environment to raise a child is his own family. They instead, offer services that can help families keep children with them, or seek adoptive parents or foster families. Nonetheless, they provide a stream of money that makes orphanages viable businesses abroad. It has been found that parents in poor countries may hand over children to these orphanages because they are special needs children, or because the family cannot afford to send them to school. If children go to orphanages because their families are poor, the solution would seem to be working to reduce poverty rather than building and funding such institutions. Nevertheless, institutions become the solution because governments do not have – or are not willing to spend – money for anti-poverty work.
Donors from wealthy countries often establish orphanages in response to a crisis. However, after the crisis is over, donations keep on arriving, so the institution stays open. A London-based group found that one orphanage in Haiti, established by a US religious organization, after the earthquake in 2010, kept children malnourished and living a filthy, unstimulating life. Yet it collected donations averaging $10,000 (£7,700) a year per child. Other such institutions were engaged in trafficking and selling children for adoption to families in wealthy countries. In these poor countries, there is no government budget to supervise these institutions or watch what they are doing.
Many of these volunteers prefer to work in orphanages, which have special needs children. However, the special needs kids need more trained care givers, physical therapists and speech therapists. Right now, they are understaffed and these volunteers are not educated enough to handle the children they care for. When volunteers turn up at an orphanage and children run to hug them, it is understandable that they feel they are providing much-needed love and attention. They do not realize that children should not turn to random strangers for affection.
Voluntourism may be fuelled by noble feelings, but it is built on irrational economics. Many organizations offer volunteers the chance to dig wells, build schools and do other construction projects in poor villages. It is easy to understand why it is done this way: if a charity hired locals for its unskilled work, it would be spending money. If it uses volunteers who pay to be there, it is raising money. However, the last thing a poor village needs is imported unskilled labor. People there are desperate for jobs. Public works serve the community better and last longer when locals do them. Besides, long-term change happens when people can solve their own problems, rather than having things done for them.
Defenders of voluntourism maintain that its real value is to change the visitor. However, while it is definitely more transformational for the visitor than the host, it is not clear how significant the effects are. A study of 162 Americans who travelled to Honduras to build houses after a hurricane found that this work had made no difference. Moreover, the houses built were expensive, costing $30,000 apiece, including airfare, while local organizations could build them for $2,000. If well-wishers had contributed money instead of labor, 15 times more houses could have been built.
In addition, visits to these orphanages showed that not much money was being spent on its most vulnerable, disabled residents. Instead, a lot of investment has gone towards making the volunteer experience as comfortable as possible – and as emotionally rewarding. Donations are spent on the volunteers’ accommodation, transport and programs rather than on hiring specialists to care for the children or bringing them much needed equipment.
Sometimes voluntourism becomes a problem. Andrea Freidus, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, wrote that voluntourism gets in the way of recognizing the real issues that create humanitarian crises. It manages to put a cover over the larger systems that produce inequality, poverty, particular patterns of disease distribution and various forms of violence. This act of volunteerism is not about justice or welfare of children in poor countries but about having a big emotional experience, that validates privilege.
Fortunately, this trend is changing. Different countries are now discouraging the practice of orphanage tourism and labeling it as child trafficking and stopping universities from advertising orphanage placements to their students. Some religious groups are trying to channel efforts into family and community care rather than orphanages. A recently published guide for short-term volunteers working with children advised groups running trips for volunteers to commit to the best interest of each child first, over the visitors’ emotional or physical needs.
Some who still advocate such volunteerism object to the criticism, saying volunteers are not the enemy. They are the solution here. This is a huge, committed, passionate, motivated population willing to do just about anything to care for these children and they should not be discouraged. They would like to see voluntourism recast as “transformational tourism”, with visitors rewarded by gaining a better understanding of these people’s lives.
SAMPLE FROM NEXT PAGE
Peter Cruise
2000981667
ENGL203 – 088
Amanda Christopher
September 30th, 2018
According to Rosenberg (2018), the growth of voluntourism fosters the emergence of disadvantageous organizations. The article explains that voluntourism creates organizations that accommodate stagnancy instead of contributing to any progress towards combating poverty for good. Furthermore, funds collected from contributors are often utilized for erroneous purposes, and yet advocates for voluntourism argue that its activities positively influence both the visitors and the host. While the author’s argument that voluntourism forms harmful organizations is valid, pointing fingers at visitors for the harmful effects of voluntourism is arguable.
It is true that disadvantageous organizations are formed as a result to the ever-increasing demand for voluntourism. In the article, the author argues that creating opportunities for the poor to combat poverty should be done instead of creating establishments that accommodate them. For instance, major corporations prefer to capitalize than to expense. This is because investment in capital will yield future benefits while expenses only decrease the net assets of the company. Similarly, it is always better to invest in the development of human power than to give continuous charity that neither benefit the giver nor the beneficiary in the long run. Furthermore, wealthy nations should demand and support the government of poor nations to better manage their economy and strictly monitor the activities of orphanages, rather than letting their countries be a permanent charity box of the former.
On the other hand, shifting the blame solely to visitors for their good willing and empathy is a questionable judgement. The author argues that while visitors’ intention roots from good, their heedlessness may result in more harm than good. However, the author seems to neglect the fact that it is not the sole responsibility of the visitors to ensure that voluntourism is actually beneficial to the people. Yes, it is true that visitors somewhat contribute to the scandalous events, whether they like to accept it or not. But it is not because they are ignorant or they do not like to look deeper into the cause. Rather, it is because some organizers are not necessarily trustworthy and volunteers are often left with little information regarding their interests in making lives better for the less fortunate. Therefore, instead of discouraging voluntourism, organizations should create campaigns that raise awareness and raise funds that will ultimately benefit the latter through permanent and progressive developments.
Word count – 384
This article was adapted from its original version.