International volunteering is when volunteers contribute their time to work for organisations or causes outside their home countries. International volunteering has a long association with international development or environment, with the aim of bringing benefits to host communities.
Trends show that international volunteering has become increasingly popular across many countries over the past few decades. International volunteering is a broad term which is used to capture multi-year, skilled placements as well as short term roles. The term voluntourism has become common to describe certain types of volunteering organised by governments, charities and travel agents.
History
On a large scale, workcamps after World War I and early missionary service were the first expressions of international service. Formal overseas volunteering can be traced back over one hundred years to when the British Red Cross set up the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) scheme in 1909. The VAD volunteers, as well as volunteers from many other national Red Cross organisations, worked in battlefields across Europe and the Middle East during World War I to treat soldiers and civilians regardless of the side they fought for. One of the most prominent organisations, Service Civil International, organised workcamps from 1920 on as a form of post-war reconciliation and was formally established in 1934.
Up to the mid-20th century overseas volunteering projects were mainly undertaken by people with direct connections to a particular cause and were considered more as short term in nature. The more formal inception of international volunteering organisations can be linked to organisations such as Australian Volunteers International (formerly the Volunteer Graduate Scheme) which formed in 1951, International Voluntary Services in 1953 in the United States, and Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in 1958 the United Kingdom. These services and that of the U.S. Peace Corps, established in 1961 during the Kennedy administration, paved the way for broader recognition of overseas volunteering in later years. During the 1960s and 1970s a movement of volunteerism and study abroad programs became popular among university students and graduates and the United Nations launched the UN Volunteers programme for young professionals to take part in a long-term (two year plus) overseas programme.
In recent years the accessibility of international volunteering for US Americans has increased significantly with many smaller charities connecting volunteers with non-governmental organisations in developing countries. About half of all international volunteering from the US takes place through faith-based organizations. For-profit travel companies have also increasingly been offering paid-for volunteering opportunities, this growth coincided with the increasing number of young people taking gap years and has been termed volunteer tourism and voluntourism to denote shorter-term voluntary work that is not necessarily the sole purpose of the trip. However, many opportunities medium- and long-term opportunities for skilled international volunteers remain, for example, the publicised role of volunteers in addressing the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa. According to US Current Population Survey, the most common activities volunteers engage in abroad include tutoring or teaching, mentoring youth, engaging in general labor, and providing counseling, medical care, or protective services.
Volunteer demographics
Global statistics on international volunteers are unavailable. However, about one million people from the US volunteer abroad each year—almost half for less than two weeks. Shorter-term voluntourism is therefore appealing to many, as it is targeted at travellers who want to make a positive change in the world, while still providing a touristic experience. Volunteering appeals to a broad cross-section of society, but the majority of volunteers are in their twenties and thirties, potentially due to perceptions of volunteering abroad being a more risky activity. The average age of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) volunteers, however, is 38, showing a broad range of participation across age groups. Recently there has been an increase in baby boomer volunteers. One possible explanation for the increase is that these people are transitioning into a new stage of life and their focus may shift toward finding activities that give their life new meaning. As with domestic volunteering, international volunteering is more common among those with a higher education and from higher income households. Volunteering Solutions on the other hand has an average age of 20 and also has 80% female solo travellers traveling abroad year year.