Is the volunteer tour that young people are keen on is wishful or responsible travel?

Yang Kejia and Shay stood in front of the classroom, looking at 12 chirping children in front of them. The girls were somewhat shy. Their voices were loud and their faces were full of curiosity. "Children have dark skin, but his eyes were bright." Yang Ke Jia still remember the face of the children on the first day of the meeting.

A sense of mission to embrace the world

This is the Kampuchea Siem Reap, known as the Smiling Heart public schools, two participated in the "hedgehog experience" international volunteer travel experience officer began life for the first time international education activities. In the next five days, their main task was to help the group to review English before the final exam.

In the face of a group of preschool age from 6 to 15 years "(Kindergarten) two students, who did not experience what the teacher soon enter the state, a brief self introduction, you open the books, reading, dictation words...... This is the first day. Second days, Shay and training children will try Kejia words in sentences, and gradually mastered the different personalities and communication among students; third days, flashcards, in order to increase the interaction between boys and girls, they set up between male and female students are selected to answer the questions of the regulations, the effect is immediate; the fourth day, sitting in the end a little girl slipped a little mermaid snow Ying painting, read "I love teacher"; at the end of the day, is also to celebrate the happy parting, singing, painting, photography, flower drum pass time. When the Kejia Jo Kerry Lee Nagh out, young children could not resist to touch some of the children will be in Kampuchea by them in such a difficult environment, the sensible and well behaved somewhat distressed.

Because of this, just five days, Kejia and Shay feel is full of warmth, Yang Kejia to the children clean the eyes and smile in mind, he said that this is the world's most simple things, but also make most people yearn for. Shay said, "the identity of the hedgehog experience officer makes me explore Kampuchea more deeply, not only as a tourist, but as an explorer.

For these young college students, this is perhaps the volunteer travel to their first meeting at the ceremony: the journey towards the world, because of their mission, and have a more positive starting point, active, which allows them to travel from the harvest more, "to participate in volunteer travel for young people, most of the harbor" "altruistic heart." Li Yaping, the founder of hedgehog, said, "hedgehog experience will emphasize this awareness to the enrolled college students. Meanwhile, we hope that the young people who sign up for Hedgehog volunteer travel will really want to do something for the world."

Of course, the way to do something for the world is not only support education: Colin's first volunteer tour that has been working for several years, then chose the South Africa whale dolphin marine protection line Lean In international volunteer travel. For this, he spent three weeks in Nasha, a small seashore town in South Africa, with his annual holiday. The past 20 days, Colin sea whale, chasing the seabirds, picking up trash on the beach, is still the local people with the help of bungee jumping, sky diving, take the opportunity to go to St. Walid reserve camping for three nights; at the same time, he and the local marine protection agency volunteers together to write a report to the garbage classification and pick up the sea, the whales appeared record of the time and place, each whale in action rules after breathing, analysis of different modes of action such as whale express emotion behavior. The love of wild animal volunteers concludes that he is going to take a diving license in the future, also want to learn to free diving, diving, a closer look at the humpback whales, sperm whales that the guys......

An old question is: what kind of travel is really meaningful travel? Surely everyone has their own answer, but there is no doubt that it will be in the hearts of looking forward to the next trip to bury, from this perspective, whether it is to do the local cuisine, in Nepal in Sri Lanka, dig eggs do elephants shoveled shit in Thailand official; both young students or has entered the society adults, meaning volunteer travel the most precious, than the open field of vision, given the initial road heart really become a traveler's talent: embrace the world, curious, dream and love.

"The biggest beneficiary."

Most volunteer travel begins with a desire for public interest, but perhaps it does not necessarily get the desired result.

If you search for the English volunteer travel "Voluntourism" on Twitter, high heat results in, questioning and praise almost as much praise point is well understood, the critics' argument is simple: Volunteer travel really is not wishful thinking charity show? A few people to be less than two weeks in a poor neighborhood, while working to play, it is beneficial to local?

Before discussing this problem, it is better to go back to the history of volunteer travel. Voluntourism comes from the combination of two words of Volunteer and Tourism, which means the dual attributes of public welfare and tourism. First, combining the two is the history of the European missionaries of charity activities in the church and the secular regime of mutual strife of the middle ages, many religious groups have organized a missionary to the surrounding area is good, in order to attract believers, "good things" and "foreign travel" for service theocratic together.

The influence of religion on the decline after the Renaissance swept Europe, people began to seek knowledge and travel, this phenomenon first appeared in the United Kingdom, educational travel culture become a social trend, in the 1690 issue of "human understanding", the famous British philosopher John Locke for the first time in philosophical logic describes the external environment for the growth of the role of knowledge the relationship between travel and education, which established. In 1909, German teacher Richard Slyman (Richard Schirrmann) found that in practice, the combination of tourism and teaching is very important to cultivate the talents; in 1912, the first World Youth Hostel (Youth Hostel) was born in Germany, the German government also launched a series of preferential policies for young students to provide convenient travel.

The Germans believe that youth hostel is a great progress of modern education, many schools and even Qinglv volunteer service as a mandatory requirement in the system, with the help of travel power and education again linked. In 1953, the international volunteer service organization (IVS) was founded. Its first project was to send 2 young people to Ace Ute, Egypt, to help local farmers to do poultry and dairy related work. 1970s, rise of "gap year" tourism boom, volunteer travel project to catch a ride with the tourism boom, the establishment of more public institutions with similar projects, volunteer travel has become an important way of Youth Travel -- because it is not only interesting, but also very cool.

After entering 2000s, volunteer travel has gradually developed into an interactive, persistent and chain of travel industry: in order to meet most of the young students overseas volunteer project, to construct a stable cooperation system through schools, enterprises, travel agencies and public organizations, originally in the medium and long term volunteer travel products market diversification, long in 1 weeks to 1 months of short-term volunteer travel agencies on projects of explosive growth, even after the development of a professional high threshold of medical support, wild rescue volunteer travel products.

However, problems arise, more and more travel public projects did not really meet the needs of the party by aid, even reduce local people engaged in some sectors of the work; the prosperity of the market has spawned a more unique experience, travelers not only is involved in animal protection or simple volunteer program, and began to involved in the care of AIDS orphans, assistance or support the community construction of Muslim women (mostly built dormitories, classrooms and other construction projects), but most of them apparently do not have the appropriate communication skills or construction.

The "architecture" project is a kind of volunteer tour that has been criticized more in foreign countries because it is easy to stop by the way.

"At first we liked it, and then we hated it, and now we find it complex, between great and bad, good and bad." Engaged in the research of tourism and hotel management scholar Nancy Magee (Nancy McGehee) of volunteer travel a few years of development, and points out the key problems in her view: if you do not put too much emphasis on commonweal volunteer travel, and take it as the global tourism concept and form a part of the transformation by gradually, the problem becomes well understood more, she concluded, "the traveler is always get the maximum benefit from, we first need to understand this point, start from here and what to do."

"I didn't really support short-term education in the past, but I changed my mind after taking part in the Kampuchea volunteer tour of hedgehog. Of course, no matter what the time was, the volunteers could not hold the mentality of have fun. They should prepare enough enough content to bring them to the children in advance. Only in this way will really feel even in a short period of time, we can also give children some small changes, such as the introverted child between male and female students become more lively, more interactive, which not only affects the children of our own equally significant."

Shay feel a sense evidence of Nancy's point of view, from this perspective, travelers get the maximum benefit, in fact, volunteer travel has always been about more than 300 years ago from the John Rock era had been established, and has not fundamentally changed the core proposition: education.

EASIN international volunteer travel founder Eris also believes that education is a volunteer for the traveler travel depth reflected, she told reporters the main interface, EASIN always adhere to, is concerned with travelers, while promoting from the public point of view, in the journey, travelers should take more social responsibility.

"A lot of public projects can be divided into professional and non professional areas. Professional work should be held by professionals, but this does not mean that short-term volunteers or volunteer travelers are not effective. According to some criticism of the short-term volunteer travel project sound, Eris expressed his views to the interface of reporters, she said, Thailand, Kampuchea and other Southeast Asian countries have implemented many part-time teaching, the children after half a day after doing nothing, but full of running around the streets or go home to do farm work, International Volunteer schools exist give them another option: school free of charge, teaching content mainly interested in teaching and English teaching, without increasing the burden, but also has a rare chance to practice english.

"We are worried that if short-term volunteer program will bring harm to the local children, but later found that as long as another batch of volunteers can continuously to children than adults, but quickly adapt to, and even take the initiative to ask the teacher, which is the next batch of countries? Many children who stay in school longer than our volunteers, such as German ballad, Brazil dance, Chinese paper-cut...

Therefore, in the view of Eris, the mature model is the key to the local value of volunteer travel, even personal power is weak, but only repeating this process, the whole system can be improved constantly in practice, "the fact that travel consumption can be transformed into creation, and public welfare it will be beneficial to the global efficiency." She said. After all, the way to take a trip with such a positive angle is the embodiment of a sense of responsibility for the traveller.

Domestic volunteer travel: the transformation of value

No matter how people look at volunteer travel, no one will deny that this is a market that is expanding and still has great potential. The well-known market research firm Mintel released in 2016 "global volunteer travel industry" (Voluntourism Worldwide) said in a report, due to the lack of accurate data acquisition, fuzzy definition, ecological volunteer travel volume is hard to measure, but there is no doubt that this is one of the most growth of a tourism market segments fast. In a October analysis, commercial media Inc. listed the volunteer travel industry as one of the eight industries that were likely to have explosive growth in 2018.

The huge market volume comes from the potential travellers, but what is a group of volunteer travelers is still unsettled. The travel writer Ethan Gelber has said that the range of people volunteer travelers covers a very broad, it is assumed that the travel budget setting and the selection of elements, volunteer motivation for the project is also very scattered, and not restricted by age groups, and in fact, there are statistical data to evidence these inferences.

If only China, volunteer travel the earliest origin are also associated with the education of college students: in 2003, the Central Committee, the Ministry of education to carry out the "GWP" is generally considered to be the starting point Chinese volunteer travel; in 2008, Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake and the Beijing Olympic Games, let the domestic college students to get out of the city, to the needs of the local volunteer; after 2010, with the young people in the prevalence of the "go" and "QiongYou" travel, "volunteer travel" was gradually endowed with a literary atmosphere of the emotion, the earliest in in Yunnan, Tibet and other popular travel the hostel and work in the form of the main places in the inn.

Li Yaping, the founder of hedgehog, recalls that in 2015, the hedgehog had just started the summer internship. Later, it was suggested that besides the serious interns, we also did some other interesting things. Li Yaping found a few friends to help, and released a new work for a part-time job, three Inns located in Lijiang, Dali and Lhasa. Never think of a launch, registration of people immediately crashed servers, this let the hedgehog found a new focus. Then, following the hedgehog internship, the hedgehog, which was founded for 3 months, quickly launched a new product line for the hedgehog experience.

"Working for night travel undoubtedly with obvious" QiongYou "imprinting, but now, Chinese students not only to save money and volunteer travel, with the market appeared more product choice, given the symbolic value of volunteer travel gradually from the early romantic" home life "or look for self, but more pragmatic according to their own needs, focus on the content itself.

Ke Zixin, a senior student this year, has participated in two Lean In international volunteer travel projects. The first time was the elephant protection project in Thailand. The second time was to save the turtles in Bali Island, and called her family together. "To learn a lot of knowledge is the best thing to be happy and to do something useful for the lovely animals." Ke Zixin told reporters that she had an account, this summer she stayed in Bali Island for 8 days, in addition to the 7 morning work arrangements, the rest are free to play, relatively ample time to let her family and the whole Bali Island attractions play a times, but is down nearly 15 thousand yuan per person to spend. "From the material or spiritual point of view, the most valuable part of volunteer travel is the content of work. If you want to travel, you may as well choose directly. This senior volunteer girl who started taking part time activities in welfare school and library from the second year of senior high school indicated that the next time she chose to volunteer travel, she would still first consider whether the work content was attracting herself.
Feelings, changes or persistence?

At least now, young, enthusiastic volunteers for Chinese travelers, travel in the work of the whole show amazing seriously and attention, but in the choice, the budget also has a very individual difference, if you want to understand their preferences, take the product as the starting point, to explore the domestic Travel Company to volunteer the young man for the moment, providing their selling and attractive products.

Although the establishment is not long, but full of flexibility of the hedgehog quickly according to the characteristics of a few experience long journey travel crowd in domestic volunteers, volunteer travel extension will expand, actively launched in Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka and other conventional products at the same time, also has developed more domestic travel routes. For example, in April this year, the organization of hedgehog Yunnan ancient culture visit village tour; or in the National Day period, the hedgehog experience and Tongji University's design team in Shanghai Chongming Island harvest "jointly launched the country art experience activities, to crop graffiti together young students and foreign artists, handmade tofu, enjoy the joy of farming in the modernization of the countryside farm.

In addition to short light products, also has the depth of product the hedgehog rooted in the local community, in May of this year, second times the hedgehog recruiting volunteers to travelers, "Sanjiang flow" of the world heritage core area, in the center of health and environmental research in Lijiang (H&E), human learning community and natural symbiotic logic. Unlike regular volunteer travel, the working cycle of Lijiang's environmental protection projects is mostly in 2 months, 6 months or even longer. More professional community research is needed, and Deng Yi, director of H&E Research Center, completes the auxiliary task of the project. The famous scholar who has been working in the environment for a lifetime thinks that Hedgehog experience provides young people with an opportunity to see, think and experience closely, understand the current Chinese countryside and farmers, and then put forward their own problems.

"This land under our feet, especially in the vast country of China, is in fact a lot of interesting, valuable and worthwhile projects." Li Yaping said that Hedgehog experience will also launch a rural volunteer tour in Inner Mongolia next year, which is a rare natural process for every "city child who has never lived in the countryside".

The launch of the rural volunteer travel hedgehog is not only in the form of flexible, with bright, there is a strong feeling of running through them, whether it is to return to the countryside or the inheritance of ancient art, for the young people, are very sympathetic and inspiring topic. Today, the number of registered users of the site more than 1 million hedgehog, WeChat more than 2 million fans, has a huge flow of hedgehog also in the further refinement of community, enhance the fan loyalty, such as recruiting officer or travel experience Master in style more distinct theme travel in Australia drive travel in Master Yao Shun, recorded video shoot play times a total of 467 thousand times in seconds.

Not long ago, in cooperation with Zhou Dafu EASIN, in late September launched the "dark creator" public travel recruitment, launched a discussion topic: how are you going to let the children see the pandas? The twenty day campaign amassed about 2 million WeChat micro-blog platform, about 20 thousand of the exposure, the first 5 winners final EASIN from hundreds of applicants, at the end of October to Sichuan, let the blind child through the four sense teaching course outside ", in addition to the visual experience of" see "panda feeling, although the trip is only the two day, for the traveler and the children are self-evident significance.

Volunteer travel is fun and wonderful. But how to make a good line and run a good product requires Travel Company to operate according to its own characteristics. As the experience in infectious hedgehog strong vitality and feelings deeply attract young fans of cohesion, or EASIN to "innovation" as a selling point, use covers force to promote mode, also, also stick to public purity, try to make the volunteer traveler spontaneous "deep into local" experience of travel claims, for example Lean In international volunteer travel. The founder of Aimee Lean In interface told reporters, most of the volunteers travel products, still maintained the characteristics of relatively traditional: morning travelers to participate in volunteer work organization, the afternoon is completely blank, so that travelers themselves fully explore and experience the local culture.

Lean In also received feedback from some of the travellers who had signed up for food and lodging conditions. But when they arranged their itinerary, they insisted on volunteering travelers to stay in the local families as much as possible, rather than Hotels with better conditions. In Aimee's view, "travel and life like the local people" is an important part of volunteer travel.
The cooperation network of global volunteers: back feeding and dissemination

In addition to emphasizing the way of volunteer travel, Lean In is also concerned about the impact of its products on the destination. According to Aimee, every volunteer travel product launched by Lean In will give priority to cooperation with public welfare institutions, so as to ensure that the income of volunteer travel products can really feed the local public welfare business instead of allowing most of the funds to flow into the pockets of travel providers. She said, this is the Lean In consistent way of doing things, though, public institutions in the schedule, the design is far better than the travel agency is professional, Lean and In have to do, is as far as possible to help them to improve the volunteer travel product planning and operation, to meet the needs of the travelers at the same time, but also to ensure these institutions have a reliable and sustainable source of funds.

Of course, Aimee also said that the emphasis on public service is not equal to the neglect of experience, Lean In will be in the initial stage of cooperation of each project, sent to fully examine the local charity organizations, whether there is willingness and ability to arrange travelers participate in volunteer activities, and will set certain standards, such as public welfare activities need travel accounted for 80%~90%.
If we put it into a global context, the domestic volunteer travel agencies not only export volunteers, but are part of the global cooperation network that volunteers and volunteers' international commonweal organizations match each other in the world. Of course, it is not easy to coordinate and achieve a consistent goal among different agencies. Eris told reporters that the creation of a very early stage in EASIN, Kenya are just less than half of the project, they have been replaced in 5 local person in charge, but even so, still can not guarantee the execution of the project will be one hundred percent to their satisfaction, the main reason lies in the widespread local time the concept of indifference, service consciousness is not strong such cultural differences, "the responsible person can own 1 hours late, and then told me to eat bread in the upstairs." Eris talks about this experience so far. Later, they found the Chinese cooperative object from the local, and then he trained and formed a special team to solve the problem thoroughly. Today, EASIN has an overseas employee about 80% of the project points to maximize the smooth and safe traveler's journey.

The experience of hardship with public organizations also allows Eris to learn how to cooperate with them from different perspectives. She tells another story to reporters, she has worked with many bird conservation experts, found that many of them had bird bird merchants in business, and get along with them, she gradually realized that many of their cultural level is not high, before doing to earn their fowling activities, but in addition to this, also there is another possibility, "if we help them to ensure life, they can help us to finish the work for the protection of birds." She says this is what the practitioners need to do for volunteer travel, and how to do more for public welfare institutions and organizations in the face of the present situation.

Therefore, in addition to EASIN services to travelers, but also on their way of helping many public organizations, especially for the domestic many silently do a lot of things animal protection organizations but few people know, in addition to material assistance, transportation volunteers, EASIN more attention to their case to tell more people listen to.

"We know where the young people love to see what can trigger their interest and enthusiasm, so we will re package these stories to make meaningful communication cases. There are tens of millions of traffic flows on the Internet. EASIN the use of their own advantages to become a bridge connecting public, travelers and NGOs: located in the Yellow Sea port of Tianjin wetland will build the world's first "migratory airport", or as a Chinese unique "turtle table", Huizhou Turtle Bay how to usher in the year of the first sea turtles come ashore to lay eggs, all through EASIN planning, into both innovative and value of education volunteer travel products, "we in search of a good and sustainable public education mode." "After all," Eris concludes, "after all, young people are in great need of public education."

From the small crowd to the high end

Volunteer travel is increasingly hot, but in the future for a long period of time, will still belong to the minority areas, and with family travel more young and open trend, many young children have footprints all over the continents of the world, how to persuade from "informed" they still believe in volunteer travel dreams?

In Eris's view, the core value of volunteer travel is education, lies in the high-end custom, she introduced a EASIN in cooperation with the international primary school case custom education travel to reporters: they led more than 20 pupils to Sri Lanka, in the whole process of travel, set up a series of public welfare, education, fusion game task link such as the protection of elephants, environmental heroes, like "Daguai clearance", finally to find the mysterious treasure as clearance reward - and treasure is their love and courage. Eris said, the course is different from the popular tour travel, because travel every detail can be designed from first to last, can be improved and adjusted by the feedback of children, or through regular follow-up to assess its value.

The hedgehog experience are constantly upgrading their products, they will be turned to the Argentina, according to the experience of the hedgehog operating officer Wei Wenqiang revealed that their upcoming English teaching trip in Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires, for a week, which also makes the world with its own camp hedgehog in the country has increased to 12, you know, at least home to South American countries as the destination of the volunteer travel is still very rare, it may mean that in the future there will be more volunteer travel agencies, the upgrade path toward the pursuit of personalized and ultimate travel products.

Author: a neighbor's network

Source: Jane book
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