aquí, ahora:here and now

 A friend just sent me an interesting email about the voluntourism article.

The problem I have with young people getting heavily involved in humanitarian work isn’t just around lack of skills, knowledge (and therefore the potential to mess up) - it’s also around their own mental health.  At [an Australian community NGO] we have had so many people leave incredibly hurt and broken…part of this is due to the institutional politics of the place, but it’s also been because often, people have become residents (they live in the building and as a result end up with primary responsibility for dealing with ODs etc)  when they were going through significant personal change - working through various issues around identity, beliefs, values etc.  These are big issues, and then they come into [the organisation] and all their questions are magnified, and on top of that they have to deal with some really confronting issues around drugs, homelessness yadda yadda…all at the ripe old age of 21 or 22.  In the last few years we have, quite by accident, had mostly 24-27 year olds coming in, and the difference has been amazing…people sort through a huge amount of stuff in those extra few years.  I don’t want to dismiss the capacities of young people, but I also think we need to find a balance between recognising their capacities and recognising that in our society, 21 ain’t that old!

Classmates of a 13-year-old Bangladeshi school girl due to enter a forced marriage have united to stop the ceremony going ahead

It’s always great to see young people — any people! — taking action to right wrongs. Children are among the most vulnerable in any society, but let’s not do them a disservice if by assuming that they cannot or do not break out of passive victim roles.

At Hiefer International Village, in Perryville, Arkansas, Colorado middle school students experience firsthand the living conditions typical of developing countries.

I’d be interested to see what sort of long-term evaluation they’re doing of this project’s effect on the kids who participate, and how they are supporting the schools involved to continue this thread of teaching and learning throughout these kids’ schooling.

Activities like this can be valuable consciousness-raisers, but unless they are complemented by sustained and well-considered programs that delve into ways to take positive action I suspect that these experiences, for most, fall by the wayside.

That said, I’d love to find out whether any similar programs are being run in Australia.