If it can be shocking to link the words “business”
and “voluntary”, it’s still less shocking than the real facts it refers to. I
decided to gather these contradictory words together under an oxymoron to
reveal the paradox and show the absurdity it implies. In effect, what I mean by
“business of voluntary work” is the fact that some so-called organizations (such
as Projects Abroad, ProWorld and many others) make volunteers pay a lot more
than they should to get the opportunity to intervene abroad.
Projects Abroad is an “international volunteer
organization” (but it is a company, not an NGO) which allows people to
volunteer for charities around the world, but more particularly in developing
countries. The organization makes them pay a certain amount per month in order
to cover the food and accommodation fees and for other services such as
individual counseling and support during the whole mission, an insurance policy
and the transportation from the airport to the project’s place. The price does
not include however the transportation fees from the departing country to the
arriving country. This can be appealing for people who don’t want to be left to
their own devices when they go abroad and find it reassuring to benefit from an
individual counseling and support, or who don’t want to organize by themselves
their mission, because they don’t have to worry about accommodation and finding
an NGO to volunteer.
I myself have already been interested in the
volunteering opportunities that Projects Abroad offers, and I’ve even already
benefited from this kind of services where you “pay to volunteer”, but through
another structure (which is an NGO and where the prices are ten times lower).
Indeed, the rates applied by Projects Abroad are really prohibitive, but also
very questionable considering the living cost in the countries where they send
volunteers. For example, in India, a volunteer must pay from 1500 to 1800 Euros
just for one month. To have already been in this country as a volunteer and as
an intern, I can testify that it’s way too much for the services provided.
What I find more shocking in these practices is
not so much the fact of making profit from people’s gullibility by making them
pay huge amounts of money but the fact of generating profits from voluntary
work. It also raises the paradox of investing money in these “organizations”,
or let’s say companies, rather than in the NGOs which would be more useful for
the projects they develop.
