This summer, I stayed home. I watched on my computer screen from across the world as, one by one, friends who went on mission trips to foreign countries changed their Facebook profile pictures to pictures of themselves and smiling native children. The children looked so content. So blissful and peaceful. Probably because they had just received stuff. I’m sure they were told about Jesus, too, and were assured that Jesus loves them and wants to have a relationship with them and that they are worthy in His eyes, but in their eyes, the stuff is what makes them beam with a newfound assurance. Despite hearing the message of the Gospel, the message of stuff has overtaken. It’s too bad stuff doesn’t last. The eyes of my friends shine bright and hopeful, confident that they are changing the lives of these children for the better.
In 2010, $211.77 billion was spent on international volunteering, creating a whole industry. These types of mission trips, often referred to as “voluntourism,” are becoming increasingly harmful to the local communities they involve. Without knowledge of the local languages, economy, customs, and culture, these trips can be disastrous. The people embarking on these trips have no doubt spent months in preparation, in prayer and with high hopes and expectations to change lives, but by the end of their journeys, the most productive thing that may have occurred is taking 200 selfies to paste across social media. I’m not saying that people don’t go into mission trips with good intentions. They do. What they don’t do is go into mission trips with proper knowledge.
This is the classic White Savior Complex.
This is where I’d like to stop and explain the intentions of this article. I am by no means putting all mission trips in a box. Medical missions, for example, are so needed and so beneficial. Partnering with well-established organizations that do real good instead of hindering or hurting the native people is another worthy example. Nor am I meaning to offend anyone who partakes in the type of mission trip being analyzed, whether knowingly or unmindfully. The purpose of this article is to offer an often overlooked perspective and to provide solutions. I wholeheartedly believe that, when people are expectant and willing, God will move regardless of the circumstances.
Teju Cole, a writer on responsible volunteering, says it best when he writes, “The White Savior Complex is not about justice. It’s about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.” It’s time for people to recognize that, in pursuit of living like Jesus, we may be doing more to ease our own consciences than easing the pain and poverty of the people we say we are helping. Voluntourism needs to become more than a camera filled with pictures and a brain gratified from feel-good memories.
The voluntourism industry needs to switch its goals. It needs to stop caring about hurting the feelings of the privileged, and it needs to start caring about how it is hurting the local communities it invades. As Americans, we don’t understand the gravity of giving to those who have never been handed anything. It weakens those who have learned to get by for generations, it takes away their empowerment, and it diminishes self-esteem. They are not helpless or primitive or abandoned; they are people. We are reducing people to a spectacle akin to seeing an elephant on a safari that is no doubt taken by tourists during their excursions.
Our role in international development should be defined by expressed needs and not by our own interests. Our main goal should be evaluating foreign policies and not imposing short-term solutions.
American policies sometimes advocate the very circumstances that lead us to volunteer. We must not advocate policies that shackle the rest of the world.
For orphans we can provide resources to capable families, assist mothers, re-home children and develop family models in orphanages. We can keep the White Savior Complex out of ministry and out of our work with impressionable children. We can also make sure volunteers are listening to real needs and learning in the local communities. We can provide jobs to local workers instead of to volunteer groups that come and go.
We must empower people. We must be the hands and feet of Jesus, and while we’re at it, use the minds He gave us to be effective.
