Understanding development impact in international development volunteering: A relational approach

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question of how interpersonal relationships in international development volunteering (IDV) affect its development impact. While the IDV literature examines care, power and cross‐cultural relationships between volunteers and hosts, it has not clearly elucidated the link between these relationships and development impact. Moreover, although scholars and practitioners posit IDV as a less‐hierarchical and relationship‐focused way to do development, others particularly critique short‐term volunteers’ abilities in providing development impact. This paper thus seeks to understand development impact through a relational approach, by unpacking how and why interpersonal relationships matter in the process of doing development. It also explores the notion of temporality in development impact in terms of impact sustainability and volunteering duration. I analyse the Singapore International Foundation's capacity building Specialist Projects in Cambodia through qualitative fieldwork in 2014 and 2015 with various Cambodian and Singaporean IDV actors. I show how reciprocal relationships over time are crucial in creating intangible and sustainable development impact. More significantly, these findings shed light on the indispensable role of hosts in successful development impact, and make a case for the re‐centring of IDV on host perspectives and contributions.