Many people are unaware of the negative sides of volunteering but surprisingly there are many ways to criticize volunteerism especially when groups are traveling to volunteer overseas. Some of these criticisms on volunteerism are: people may not want the help in the way we feel is necessary, the changes aren’t sustainable for a community after the volunteer work is over, people are volunteering for all the wrong reasons, we are focusing on the wrong issues, and in some instances of volunteerism there is a communication barrier. Most Americans can picture in their minds images that they have seen of a celebrity volunteering in an underdeveloped country whether it’s for natural disaster relief or visiting children in orphanages however, this type of volunteerism called volunteer tourism due to the traveling to another country comes with a negative impact according to some experts. Volunteer tourism comes with a set of criticisms such as language barriers, the issues of identity, class, and privilege, and it being all about money or world experience. One expert named Ivan Illich talks about this idea of volunteer tourism when giving a speech titled “To Hell With Good Intentions.” This speech talks about the negative impact being faced by poor villagers in Mexico from American middle class volunteers. Ivan Illich believes that Americans have a societal value to be “do-gooders” and “share God’s blessings”. Illich also believes that Americans are so driven by these American ideals that they implement them on these Mexican villagers through pushing traditional American values onto others in other countries such as democracy and free enterprise. Ivan Illich lays out the problems that these middle class Americans create when he says “All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder… You start on your task without any training.” (Illich, 4) To make his speech even more powerful Ivan Illich creates comparisons to drive his argument home of volunteer tourism having a negative impact such as the Peace Corps receiving training in order for the volunteers to not face culture shock but nobody worries about the culture shock of the villagers. He criticizes this group’s lack of training because most of the volunteers couldn’t even speak the villagers native language. This brings up the issue of communication barriers. He also compares how negatively these middle class volunteers would be perceived if they tried to do the same volunteering in poor neighborhoods in America. “People who understand that your own bad consciences push you to this gesture would laugh condescendingly. Soon you would be made aware of your irrelevance among the poor, of your status as middle-class college students on a summer assignment.” (Illich, 4) This shows that even though privileged United States citizens feel the need to do good that sometimes these other countries don’t need our help in the ways that we feel would help them. These countries don’t need our help in implementing our traditional American values because these are not the things that their culture may value as much as we do if at all. More criticisms of international volunteerism is brought up in an article titled “Before you pay to Volunteer Abroad, Think of the Harm that you might do” written by Ian Birrell. He also notes that these middle class privileged people are blind by their do-good values by being easily drawn to things such as “western tour companies that offer voluntary work alongside the holiday of a lifetime” but he also shows that the ignorance could also be whether or not these service trips are really to people in need. Birrell highlights that these orphanages in developing countries are often for profit and rely on these do good tourists in order to make profit through things like donations. Birrell even notes that in this international volunteering comes with other negative impacts that “Wealthy tourists prevent local workers from getting much-needed jobs, especially when they pay to volunteer; hard-pressed institutions waste time looking after them and money upgrading facilities; and abused or abandoned children form emotional attachments to the visitors, who increase their trauma by disappearing back home.” Another expert named Adam Davis addresses a criticism of not having discussions on volunteerism because speaking about volunteerism may “be a problem—first, because if you’re talking about service, you might not be doing service, and second, because if you’re talking about service, you might start to wonder about its goodness.” (Davis, 1) During his discussion on volunteerism, he focuses on a criticism of why we serve. Davis suggests that we serve because “(1) we are God’s children; (2) we share the earth; (3) I find myself in you; (4) I win praise by serving you; (5) I suck.” In summary, he suggests that instead of having the reward of money these people that do community service do it because they feel that their religion pushes them to do good deeds in order to go to heaven, we are all on this Earth so we should make it a better place for everyone to live, they feel empathy, they gain positive attention from doing community service, and they feel bad about themselves or guilty of being a bad person so they try to make up for it through service. This criticism shows the fact that volunteering may be for selfish reasons. In SERVE class there were specific examples from various readings of selfish volunteerism to prove Davis’ point that also suggested that people volunteered for the wrong reasons. In one example a fraternity needed to fulfill their service hours requirement so they decided to go on a community service cruise so that they can vacation but still get their hours squared away. In this example, the fraternity was doing community service to self-fullfill their goals rather than looking more deeply at the work that they are doing. They didn’t even realize that they were making a negative impact on the community that they were working in by volunteering at an orphanage and building close bonds with the orphans then promising that they would come back knowing that they never would when these orphans already have problems with abandonment. In a way, Davis suggests that volunteering can be very one sided and often rewarding mostly for the volunteer otherwise they would probably not engage in volunteerism. He asserts that it’s important to look at all aspects of volunteering which could be tied back to the active citizenship continuum. The active citizenship continuum is another helpful tool in making sure that the volunteer is really closely looking at the work that is being done like Davis suggests. The active citizenship continuum discusses how a volunteer can go from just being a member and not concerned with the role that they are playing in the volunteer work all the way to an active citizen where a community becomes a priority in values and life choices. An active citizen is knowledgeable about the social issue that they are addressing in their volunteer work and is continually working on the issue as a full investment. He wants us to be aware of the complexity of volunteerism just like the active citizenship continuum may break down the complexity of volunteerism a bit. Davis also brings up the issue of American values and community service just like Ivan Illich when he talks about the value of democracy and democracy diluting our view “to look closely at inequality”. (Davis, 5) Davis suggests that volunteers need inequality in order to even volunteer in the first place. Volunteers do not fix this inequality but rather put a band-aid over it until they can come back and volunteer again so that they can need them again. Davis uses this criticism to address that the impacts that volunteers have is unsustainable for poor communities and are just temporary fixes most of the time. He argues that we should try to look deeper at a goal of service being to “move toward equality.” (Davis, 6) This would suggest a more permanent solution to social issues that volunteers are addressing. Another article by an author named Mcknight also addressed the issue of volunteerism being temporary fixes when he suggested that volunteer groups should focus on rebuilding communities from the inside rather than bringing outside sources that they cannot sustain like most volunteer groups do when they go into these volunteer activities. Going along with the topic of criticizing unsustainable fixes turning into permanent fixes to social issues, another critic of volunteerism named David Hilfiker writes in his article titled The Limits of Charity about why it’s necessary to focus on justice for the groups in need rather than charity for these various groups. He highlights the issue of volunteerism actually being an obstacle for these social issues being changed by masking it with good deeds. “Charitable endeavors such as Joseph's House serve to relieve the pressure for more fundamental societal changes.” (Hilfiker, 1) Hilfiker points out that “if we are busy caring for the poor, who is going to do the time-consuming work of advocacy, of changing the system?” He calls volunteers to look to be advocates for justice for these social issues and take that into account when doing volunteer work that may be lying to people about these social issues being fixed for a while. It’s clear from this article that again as a part of the active citizenship continuum discussed earlier that we must want to gain justice for this social issue in some way rather than continually being a part of these temporary fixes. Hilfiker suggests that volunteers can change for the better by discussing their volunteer work like Davis argued and being advocates of social change like advocating through politics or raising awareness to the dangers of these social issues just having Band-Aids put on it. In conclusion, American volunteers need to be aware of the impact that they are making when they volunteer whether it is positive or negative. In order to do this, there needs to be discussions when it comes to community service. As Americans, we cannot continue to assume that the way things are done in this country are the ways that they should be done everywhere especially when it comes to volunteering in other countries. We need to be knowledgeable about various issues and communities that we are volunteering in and for. As volunteers we should work on fixing the problem itself rather than just focusing on doing a temporary good deed.