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Bethina Loiseau, Rebekah Sibbald, Salem A. Raman, Darren Benedict, Helen Dimaras, Lawrence C. Loh, ‘Don't make my people beggars’: a developing world house of cards, Community Development Journal, Volume 51, Issue 4, 4 October 2016, Pages 571–584, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsv047
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Recent years have seen increasing participation in short-term international volunteering. These volunteer teams usually engage individuals from high-income countries to travel and provide charitable services for host communities in low- and middle-income countries for a period of 3 months or less. The economic impacts arising from this phenomenon often vary; while volunteers introduce a new revenue that may support local job creation, they may also inadvertently disrupt the local workforce with their contributions, and thereby drive up unemployment. In addition, there may be a shift of economic focus towards attracting and supporting volunteers, rather than developing meaningful capacity in needed developmental areas. There also exist expected tensions with the direct and indirect goals and impacts of visiting volunteer teams, such as intended evangelism, unintended cultural colonialism, or education over service. Weighed against the desirability of additional community revenue, these tensions raise numerous ethical concerns. This paper examines a medium-sized city in Latin America, which receives many well-meaning international volunteers annually, who serve disadvantaged local populations. Specifically, this paper examines a faith-based volunteer team that was primarily composed of non-skilled youth. Using participant observation and interviews with relevant stakeholders, we identified an unsustainable growth model in place at the local hospital, which directs resources to support and promote the flow of foreign volunteers despite ethical concerns around perpetuating poverty, skills mismatch, and limited beneficial impacts on the target population. We highlight future concerns for this community associated with a financial dependence on international volunteers, and present solutions to potentially mitigate this issue.