Volunteer Tourism Research Articles

Būsimųjų pedagogų požiūris į savanoriškos veiklos bei „minkštųjų“ gebėjimų ugdymo(si) sąsajas: Lietuvos ir Latvijos aukštųjų mokyklų atvejis

In Lithuania, 2022 was announced as the Year of Volunteering. This was one of the reasons for conducting this research and delving into the phenomenon of volunteering, the skills developed during volunteering activities, and the relevance of these skills in pedagogical activities. The role of the educator in contributing to the education of the future generation is extremely important; therefore, educators themselves should not only have extensive professional knowledge but also reinforce personal and interpersonal skills, known as “soft” skills, which help to become a mature person capable of solving personal problems, be active in a working environment, be ready to work both independently and in a group, take the initiative, etc. The article raises a problematic question - what are the connections between voluntary activities and the development of students’ “soft” skills? The research aims to reveal future educators’ attitudes to the links between voluntary activities and developing “soft” skills. The research applied the methods of scientific literature and document analysis, a written survey, and statistical analysis of the obtained data. The analysis of scientific literature revealed that volunteering could take very different forms – volunteering activities and volunteering services; local, national and international volunteering; specialised activities; activities of the representatives of specific age groups; and short-term and long-term volunteering. Each form has its own advantages, so it is very important to choose not only the topic but also the form that meets the volunteer’s needs. The study results showed that the participation of both Lithuanian and Latvian students in voluntary activities is not systematic. They reveal that the level of enhanced “soft” skills acquired by Lithuanian students during volunteering is greater compared to Latvian students. The future pedagogues of both countries positively assess both the volunteering phenomenon itself and the “soft” skills acquired during volunteering, which are especially important for developing specialists’ competencies, pedagogical professional and social activities. Both Lithuanian and Latvian students highly value the importance of volunteering and believe that they gained important experience and developed and reinforced “soft” skills, which are very important in their future professional activities - the abilities to work in a team, communicate and cooperate, make decisions, organise, and plan.

Much more than voluntourism: the altruistic volunteer tourism motivation and experience in Israel

Much more than voluntourism: the altruistic volunteer tourism motivation and experience in Israel

Civic Engagement, Intercultural Learning and Sustainable Peace: The Role of International Volunteering

Civic Engagement, Intercultural Learning and Sustainable Peace: The Role of International Volunteering

Rethink International Volunteering and the Making of a Peaceful World

Rethink International Volunteering and the Making of a Peaceful World

Understanding tourists’ transformative experience: A systematic literature review

Tourism has the potential to trigger lifelong changes through a transformative experience. However, existing tourists' transformative experience (TE) research has been criticized for lacking the embodied dimensions of transformative experiences leading to fragmented and contradictory views on what and where these experiences take place in the tourism context. Considering these criticisms coupled with the important role of transformative experience, this study systematically examines tourists' transformative experience literature to address the current knowledge gap. Adopting a quantitative systematic literature review approach, this paper aims to outline the research trends of tourists' transformative experiences and provide insights for future research. The findings suggest that more research concerning transformative experiences in tourism has been dedicated to volunteer tourism discourses as the context of volunteering offers a 'once in a lifetime' experience. The findings also point to a dearth of appropriate and comprehensive theoretical frameworks in the tourism context. The current study found that while transformative experiences are reflected in four dimensions of behavioral, psychological, social, and spiritual experiences; socio-psychological transformation experiences dominate. A research framework with future research questions unpacking possible theoretical and methodological directions is further proposed.

The projected impact of COVID-19 on global surgical care: A case study of International Volunteers in Urology (IVUmed)

Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face immense health care needs with limited available resources, mainly due to the lack of health care providers in specific regions of the world, leading to global inequalities in medical care access. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 40% of the countries in the world have less […]

The Management Model of Sustainable Volunteer Tourism

This study aims to analyze volunteer tourist satisfaction and host community perceptions and design a sustainable volunteer tourism management model. This research includes qualitative research using mixed analysis methods. The data consists of primary and secondary data from Afo Tour and Travel North Maluku, Volunteer Tourists, and the host community in 2018, 2019 and 2021. The study found that volunteer tourism provides satisfaction for tourists and host communities. The most dominant factors providing satisfaction are Nature Tourism, Marine tourism and Shark feeding attractions, Knowledge transfer, Outbound and Culinary. Tourist satisfaction has an impact on loyalty to volunteer tourists. Volunteer tourism managers must implement a “two-sided satisfaction model” that emphasizes the satisfaction of tourists and host communities as the key to achieving the sustainability of volunteer tourism.

Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity ed. Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower

Reviewed by: Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity ed. Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower Christine Garlough (bio) Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower, Editors. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2021, 314 pp., $99.00 hardcover, $27.00 paper. What if care—as a value and practice—was given the weight it deserves?1 How might our lives change if care was understood as more than a philosophical ideal or inspiration for another political slogan, Instagram meme or [End Page 237] advertising campaign, and instead was intentionally mobilized in everyday local, national, and global efforts for social and institutional change? What if, in times fundamentally characterized by precarity, care became the guiding ethos—politically, socially, and interpersonally—in the face of global pandemics, entrenched neoliberal capitalism, violence fed by racism, climate change, inequitable wealth distribution, and systemic failures of communication? Could this moment, characterized by overlapping crises, usher in a care movement? In Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, the editors, Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower call upon the expertise of prominent care scholars to offer practical and nuanced ways of reconsidering how care has been conceptualized and "how those employing care theory can effectively respond to the prevalent reality of neoliberal precarity" (4). In Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, a wide-ranging group of international and interdisciplinary contributors extend the groundbreaking work of scholars such as Judith Butler (2004) and Kathleen Millar (2017), who have argued that while we are all ontologically precarious as part of the human condition, many people experience unequally distributed conditions of existence. Consequently, their lives are characterized by insecurity in ways that deeply affect their material, political, or psychological well-being. Hamington and Flower build upon this premise to contend that, "life's precariousness is exacerbated by individualistic and market-based responses that fail to integrate empathy and care for people and the natural world" (282) and argue for the importance of establishing caring infrastructures. To this end, the thirteen chapters comprising Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity address core concerns at the intersections of care and precarity from a diverse set of perspectives and, in the process, speak to one another in meaningful ways. Pieces by Andries Baart, Maggie FitzGerald and Yayo Okano explore care crises in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Japan and provide distinctive assessments of care's conceptual relationships to precariousness and precarity and how these inform everyday practices, institutional norms, social values, legislative policy, and our relationship to the environment. Hamington and Flower focus on social change, and ask how might care ethics support an international social movement that "reconnects people separated by identity-based discrimination, disparate resources and oppressive violence?" (9). Vrinda Dalmiya deftly explores the limitations of care, and related concepts like empathy and vulnerability, when they are transformed into commodities with market-oriented agendas in contexts like volunteer tourism and celebrity humanitarianism. In addition, Italian care theorist, Elena Pulcini—who recently passed away from a COVID related illness—provides a beautifully written chapter on global vulnerability that revisits the question of why we should take care of future generations, who are distant from us in both space and time. In the face of a very uncertain future, what are our obligations to them and how might these take form in daily commitments? [End Page 238] For those new to care scholarship, Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity offers an indispensable overview of the field. It also provides valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of more than four decades of care scholarship, as it engages rigorously with emerging scholarship and provides new perspectives on old debates. For instance, how might we better understand the complicated relationship between care giving and care receiving? Sarah Clark Miller's chapter attends to the moral precarity of caregivers in neoliberal systems and the precarity of relationships themselves. In doing so, she considers the ways "caretaking practices and policies have been negatively affected under neoliberal principles and institutions" and provides innovative arguments regarding the long-term damage caregiving may do to caring relationships (48). Writing through the lens of social-welfare feminism, Eva Feder Kittay's chapter extends her...

On application of perception intelligence in international communication of the film and television industry: a case study on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Research on film perception started by David Bordwell pushes the movie audio-visual research into a new empirical research field. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, as the first Chinese film in history winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, builds a bridge for cultural exchange between eastern and western culture in the movie circle worldwide, and achieves a good cross-cultural communication effect. Relying on the “Perception Intelligence Laboratory” of Liaoning University, this paper adopted empirical verification, questionnaire survey, and in-depth interview to collect, analyze and research audience feedback data, by observing the psychological reaction data of international student volunteers from Liaoning University who participated in watching “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, a movie directed by Ang Lee, hoping to provide a reference for film and television works to tell Chinese stories and spread Chinese voice.

VOLUNTEERING AND VOLUNTEER TOURISM: CHALLENGES AND REALITIES

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the current state of volunteer tourism in the world, the idea for the future development of such tourism in Ukraine. The authors outlined the distinctive features of this type of tourism, analyzed the current state in Ukraine, and identified the problems that stood in the way of the development of volunteer tourism. Methodology. The survey is based on a comparison of data from the Worlds Volunteer Report 2021, British international charitable organization “Charities Aid Foundation” and International Labor Organization, which conduct research in the field of volunteerism, measuring the achievements of the countries of the world by certain indicators in terms of the attitude of the population to charitable and volunteer assistance. Results of the survey showed that every year in the world the number of people involved in volunteering is growing, but the number of those who make donations is decreasing; a significant aspect for the development of volunteer tourism is the mentality of the country; in developed countries, the number of organizations specializing in volunteer tourism is increasing; for the development of the sphere of volunteer tourism, various stimulating actions are taken. The negative aspects of the development of volunteer tourism were found: main goal of volunteers is the sense of their own importance, new emotions; the lack of appropriate training for volunteers; short staying. Practical implications. The issue of supporting and developing volunteer tourism will remain relevant for a long time, because in our world there are many global environmental and social problems. February 2022, volunteer tourism in European countries near the borders with Ukraine increased several times with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia on the territory of Ukraine. Value/originality One of the most effective areas of voluntourism cooperation today is the development of joint international social projects, with the involvement of volunteers. The second area of cooperation is the organization of cooperation at the expert level. The third area of cooperation is raising awareness of the Ukrainian population about the development of volunteer activities, volunteer projects and programs.

Opportunities for International Orthopaedic Volunteerism: An Exploration of United States and Canada-Based Nonprofit Organizations.

In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), there are often not enough orthopaedic surgeons to treat musculoskeletal conditions. International volunteerism is 1 way that the orthopaedic community seeks to meet this need. This study explored the opportunities available for orthopaedic surgeons to volunteer overseas as offered by nonprofit organizations in the United States and Canada. A systematic internet search was conducted using 2 distinct search strategies. A website was considered a "hit" if it was that of a U.S. or Canada-based nonprofit, volunteer, or non-governmental organization that had opportunities for international orthopaedic volunteerism. Duplicate hits were eliminated to identify distinct organizations. Data regarding the work and geographical reach of the organization, as well as changes to its volunteer programs as a result of COVID-19, were extracted from each hit. Of the 38 distinct organizations identified in the U.S. and Canada, the most common orthopaedic subspecialties represented were pediatrics (37%), hand (24%), and arthroplasty (18%). Foot and ankle (4 organizations; 11%), sports medicine (2 organizations; 5%), and oncology (1 organization; 3%) were the least represented subspecialities. The most common regions for volunteer trips included Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by West and East Africa. Twelve organizations (32%) were identified as having a religious affiliation. For most organizations, the trip duration was a minimum of 1 week. All volunteer organizations included operative or clinical experiences as part of their trips, and the majority of organizations (58%) reported that their trips included opportunities for training local surgeons. Many organizations (71%) reported having resumed trips after halting them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many opportunities exist for orthopaedic surgeons to volunteer their time and skills abroad. Future directions for the improvement of international volunteer efforts among the orthopaedic community could include expanding the number of existing volunteer opportunities and assessing the ethics, safety, efficacy, and longevity of these programs.

A Qualitative Study Assessing Haitian Pediatric Nursing Educational Needs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

After Port-au-Prince's 2010 earthquake, Hospital Bernard Mevs (HBM) developed a collaboration with international medical volunteers to provide clinical care and medical resources; that evolved to include medical education as local Haitian staffing developed. There has been limited coordination among volunteers and local providers about ways in which volunteers can best serve the hospital, and literature that addresses how to coordinate volunteer efforts to support the educational needs of the local nursing staff is scant. Our objectives were to complete an educational needs assessment of the most common diagnoses encountered, requested topics for education, and preferred learning modalities as reported by Haitian pediatric nurses, and categorize the strengths of HBM and barriers to care to understand more fully the context within which nurses function, and how education and international volunteers may be related. In October 2019, 10 HBM pediatric nurses participated in small-group interviews. Questions were based on an interview guide and responses were coded and analyzed for recurring themes. The most common diagnoses were sepsis, hydrocephalus, and hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Topics for review included chest tubes, ventilator management, and ventriculoperitoneal shunts. Preferred learning modalities were didactics and hands-on workshops. Strengths of the hospital were team dynamics and education provided by HBM and international volunteers, whereas the most common barrier to care was lack of clinical supplies. This information is useful to guide future educational interventions, and this model may inform other programs with a volunteer presence in resource-limited settings to promote collaboration and self-directed learning.

Applying the Byronic Model to the International Volunteers of the Spanish Nationalists (1936–1939)

Applying the Byronic Model to the International Volunteers of the Spanish Nationalists (1936–1939)

‘What is your name, where do you come from, what is your grade?’ Using art-based interviews to highlight the experience of children hosting school tours in Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT The incursion of tourism into schools is an increasing phenomenon, whether through volunteer tourism, developmentourism or philanthropic tourism. Tourism studies have largely ignored children as stakeholders in tourism destinations. In Zimbabwe, economic turbulence has led to a broken education system that relies on external donors to finance schools. As part of this financing, some schools welcome tourists in exchange for funds, sponsorship or infrastructure. Tourists in these settings usually visit schools as part of a mass tour for between 2 and 3 h, with the expectation that children will receive financial benefits or improve their English speaking skills. This paper uses art-based methods to centre children in the research process and reporting. Using children’s drawings and extracts from the interviews and observations, the findings of this study indicate that children in the school experience the school tour in a repetitive manner. In contrast, interviews with adults suggest that school tours are positioned as enjoyable and valuable due to the exposure to English. The data generated by this study contribute to our understanding of children at host destinations and the use of art-based methods.

Citizen science approach to mapping background radiation for environmental epidemiology

BACKGROUND AND AIM Volunteered geographic information from citizen scientists can provide alternatives to traditional exposure assessment for environmental epidemiological studies; whereby, facilitating access to data, providing continuous monitoring, improving exposure awareness for participants and the community, among others. Safecast is a participatory, open-source, citizen science centered radiation surveying project where international volunteers collect and openly share data on environmental radiation collected through mobile sensors. However, information is lacking on the potential use of the collected measurements for epidemiological research, especially regarding their validity for exposure assessment. We aimed to develop and validate maps of gamma radiation (GR) for Denmark and Switzerland, as part of a larger European-wide consortium, using measurements collected by the Safecast community. METHODS Spatial Bayesian mixed-effects models were fit to GR measurements from Safecast, using predictors of soil class, geology, land cover, and elevation from maps. Pointwise posterior means from these models were used to predict GR for the territory of each country at a resolution of 1x1km2. Internal validity was assessed using cross-validation (CV) with random assignment of either the measurements (random-CV) or area blocks defined by square grids (different cell sizes) to folds (spatial-CV). We also validated maps for Switzerland against personal exposure measurements (dosimeters worn over five consecutive days) in 149 children using linear regression and calculated the coefficient of determination(R2) and mean squared error. RESULTS Spatial variations in GR exposure was observed for each country. Predictors of GR from Safecast were associated with ambient dose rates, where models fit the data well, for example with a R2 of 0.5 in random-CV, with 0.77 model fit in Denmark. CONCLUSIONS Results highlight the potential for using open citizen science data for exposure assessments in radiation research. The association between GR and childhood cancers will be assessed. KEYWORDS Radiation, citizen science, geographic information systems, exposure assessment

Volunteer tourists' revisit intentions explained through emotional solidarity and on-site experience

While volunteer tourism has gained significant attention in the tourism literature, direct social interactions that occur between local residents and visitors have not yet been thoroughly examined. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the effect of volunteer tourists' emotional solidarity with community residents on their experiences and revisit intentions. Data was collected from Chinese residents who had participated in volunteer tourism within the two years prior to March 1, 2020. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling was employed to test a proposed model (involving emotional solidarity, visitor experience, and revisit intention constructs) among 323 responses. The results indicated that feeling welcomed was a significant predictor of both on-site learning and enjoyment experiences. Additionally, it was found that sympathetic understanding directly influences enjoyment and escape experiences. Finally, three forms of on-site experiences including learning, enjoyment, and escape, significantly influenced revisit intentions.

From International to Local: Promoting Local Volunteer Tourism to Guarantee the Persistence of Wildlife Conservation Projects in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Volunteer tourists, often foreigners, collect essential data in wildlife conservation projects worldwide. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, international tourism activities reduced drastically, forcing many conservation projects to shut down. Using a nine-year (2013–2021) case study in Indonesia, we examine how local and foreign tourists construct the meaning of their volunteer experiences in the light of COVID-19. We aim to highlight the potential benefits of local volunteer tourism to face the travel limitations posed by COVID-19, and to show an example of how conservation projects can overcome the challenges of the current and potential future pandemics. We recruited 117 volunteers (49 Indonesians, 68 foreign; 73 females, 44 males; mean age: 24.2 ± SD 4.7) that collected 50.8% of the total amount of data collected by the project over the same period. Of the 117 volunteers, 81 of them (38 Indonesians, 43 foreigners) filled in a feedback form at the end of their stay. Via logistic regressions, we found that Indonesian volunteers declared more positive feedback on the logistics at the research station (p = 0.047). Via Bayesian structural equation models, we found that Indonesian volunteers reported significantly more frequently than foreign volunteers that they learned new skills (89% Credible Interval = 0.017–0.351) and that they gained personal wisdom, growth and maturity (89% Credible Interval = 0.891–1.003) from the volunteer experience. The volunteer program evolved from being 100% foreign volunteers in 2013 to 100% Indonesian volunteers by 2020 at the peak of the pandemic, which helped maintain the continuity of the research and conservation activities. We presented the positive implications of shifting towards local volunteer tourists in a long-term conservation project. We suggest that promoting local volunteer tourism through training new generations of nationals in conservation projects is key to guarantee the persistence of such initiatives in the post-COVID-19 Era.

Volunteer Tourism: Reflections from Applied Ethics

This article aims to use the applied ethics perspective to reflect on the ethical complexities that may appear in the context of volunteer tourism. In this tourist typology, volunteers come into contact with the local culture by establishing a dialogue between their motivations (diverse and not always markedly altruistic) and the morals and needs of the host community. In this dialogue, difficulties arise that may put these volunteer projects at risk since interactions between people with different values and morals can generate distrust, frustration, and even open conflicts between the host community and visitors. In this context, this article exposes and applies ethics concepts to specific cases and reaffirms the need to train volunteers before their trips to encourage critical self-reflection on their behavior when they are in societies with a different system of morality.

Stakeholder perceptions of volunteer tourism community impact

PurposeThis paper aims to examine volunteer tourism (VT) experiences of three stakeholder groups in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The guiding research question is: how does VT influence marginalized communities from the perspectives of different stakeholders? This study was developed to address a need for further research that critically looks at the social impacts of VT in vulnerable communities and analyze the nature of VT by reviewing concepts related to sustainable tourism and social representation theory (SRT).Design/methodology/approachUsing a phenomenological approach, this study is founded on SRT to understand the lived experiences of VT and the perceptions of its impacts on favela (slum) communities. This paper describes and interprets these meanings with a high degree of depth and richness using interviews, observation and document analysis. The experiences of community residents, voluntourists and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff are considered.FindingsStudy findings indicate that the different groups expressed several benefits and obstacles to VT. Voluntourists had a difficult time interpreting what influences VT has in general for the community focusing more inwardly on their personal experiences. Community residents experienced VT differently than the other groups. They identified the most benefits from VT and felt that they had the ability to create representations of themselves and of their community overall. NGOs expressed positive aspects of VT such as more community participation but noted concerns with voluntourists’ commitment.Originality/valueThis study is one of few to consider and compare the VT perceptions of three different stakeholder groups in vulnerable communities.

Investigating the Effect of Compassion Fade in Volunteer Tourism.

This study investigated the relationship between the type of volunteer tourism (human vs. flora vs. fauna) and the type of message (individual with no statistic vs. individual with small statistic vs. individual with large statistic) and potential tourists’ attitudes towards volunteer tourism and their intention to donate their time. To do so, this study conducted a between-subject 3 × 3 factorial design online experiment, where the influences of compassion fade on attitudes and behavioral intention to donate time for volunteer tourism, along with the impacts of positive affect, emotional involvement, and credibility, were examined. The results of the current study revealed that type of volunteer tourism and type of message do not affect attitude towards volunteer tourism and attitude towards the ad. Further analysis indicated that, among all three mediating variables, only positive affect mediated the relationship between type of volunteer tourism and attitude towards volunteer tourism, and all other hypotheses were not statistically significant. Moreover, the results indicated that there is a positive relationship between perceived ad credibility and attitude towards the ad, and also between perceived ad credibility and attitude towards volunteer tourism. The implications of these results are discussed based on the empirical findings.