Host communities

You know why you want to be a volunteer, but have you wondered about how your hosts perceive you? Why they think you are here in their community? Your placement organisation may have promised you an eager welcome from your hosts, but often the reality is a bit more confusing than that. People may be confused or uncertain about why you are working in their community and just what it is you are trying to achieve. This section offers some reflections on the ways volunteers and hosts perceive one another.

Reverse scenario: Imagine that a group of Peruvian young people arrived in a deprived part of Dublin, and attempted to run a play scheme for local children. Or perhaps you can imagine a group of Senegalese volunteers coming to teach French in Irish schools, or maybe it is Eastern Europeans volunteering on construction projects. What sort of reception are all these international volunteers likely to receive from the local communities? Maybe confusion, maybe curiosity, maybe nervousness and maybe even hostility. Now turn this scenario around to your own volunteer objectives, and maybe you begin to get a perspective on some of the ways you may be received.

In becoming a volunteer, be it joining a project alongside other volunteers or being on a placement on your own, it is important not to assume that the local population automatically know why you are there, what you are doing or that they even want you there. Working with an organisation that has a strong relationship with the local communities you will work with is vital to the quality of the project. However, beyond this, you as a volunteer need to make the time to answer people’s questions, to hang out with them and build relationships based on understanding not assumptions. For, just as you are excited to learn about those you have come to work with, so they may be equally curious about you.

Why we become international volunteers is usually complex and probably personal, but the idea of helping others is often prevalent. As part of a piece of research in Malawi on the ways pupils and teachers perceived international volunteers, people were asked why they felt volunteers came to their schools and their country. Although many identified altruism as a motivator, people also recognised volunteers' personal motivations. There was a strong sense that Malawi had something to offer volunteers, with some feeling that volunteers must have bad family situations if they want to spend so much time away from home, and in at least one case a suggestion that volunteers came because they could not get jobs at home. When asked why she felt volunteers came to Malawi to work in schools, one head teacher responded : “…they have a personal interest in culture, to aid development, they want to experience Africa; it is a personal experience (…) maybe they don’t have jobs in their own countries.”

Few volunteers set off thinking they will have a terrible time, not wanting to go but feeling that altruism demands it of them. Rather, international volunteering is exciting; it offers opportunities for new adventures in new places and to learn new things, all while hopefully doing something worthwhile.