There always needs to be a product: 'Self-reflection', volunteering & the emerging development entertainment industrial complex
First, there was good, old volunteering in Africa or Latin America, then we (were) discovered (by) the CV-enhancing experience industry around voluntourism in developing countries and now we are faced with the fast-growing genre of critical self-reflection by returning volunteers who discovered how self-serving #InstagrammingAfrica really is. ‘Why is it always former volunteers who now write about their so-called discoveries after yet another bad experience in a so-called orphanage?’, a friend asked on facebook a few weeks ago. The urge to build: From schools, to CVs and reputations First, our parents’ generation went to Nicaragua to build schools, then we baby-boomer children went on to volunteer in Nepal, Cambodia or Ghana and a few years later an orphanage-cum-English-teaching industry has been firmly established, leaving little to no room for a meaningful, political engagement with poverty, injustice and underdevelopment. But like most other parts of our carefully managed lives