By Hal Whiteman
These are, perhaps, not the usual observations to appear on this blog. While they are mostly about student volunteers, they are not by one. Let me nail my volunteer colours to the mast straightaway; I am a semi-retired, short-term volunteer in his 60s, who recently completed a month at a provincial university in southern Vietnam, helping them with their business planning.
I am writing this post at the behest of my son, who suggested that there may be some merit in my offering some thoughts on the performance of student volunteers, with a view to making suggestions as to how their efforts might bear more fruit. In setting out these views I do not mean to suggest for an instant that my outlook is any wiser or more productive. Productivity is to a significant extent the luck of the draw; if I had come a couple of months earlier, before a positive change in management in the office I worked with, my work would have had much less effect. And I’m sure I made my share of gaffes, both cultural and professional, that undercut my contribution.
The volunteers I encountered fall roughly into three categories: long-term volunteers, for whom development assistance is a career; shorter-term volunteers, whose expertise is of specific use to the university; and students who are taking a term or a summer away from studies to volunteer in a variety of capacities.
The long-term volunteers are, to me, the stars among the front-line workers; they are committed and work long hours for little compensation. They accept that progress will be slow and uneven, and that culture usually, although not always, takes precedence over change. They are there to help the community build capacity. Their job is, to them, more than just a job – it is a way of life.
Those like me, older and with specific skills, will succeed or fail depending on three principal factors: how well and how quickly we adapt quickly to culture and circumstances; whether there is a good match between what the organization wants and what we can deliver; and how hard and diligently we work. Because most of us have a long work experience to draw on, we are better able to take initiative in the absence of specific direction.
Student volunteers bring energy and enthusiasm to their assignments, and like all volunteers, mixed motives. They sincerely want to help make a better world, they are thrilled at the idea of seeing a different part of it, and they revel at the prospect of new experiences. They are prepared to do whatever they are asked, whether in their job description or not. These traits can carry them a long way, but they bring limitations as well. It’s not that they are here on a lark, but my perception is that most have little sense of or interest in the longer term impact of their presence here, no interest in gauging the success or failure of their mandate. They are generally not sufficiently motivated (or perhaps confident) to take independent initiative. Most work short hours, negotiate three-day weekends to go to Saigon or Bangkok, and generally enjoy life.
In part, they are able to do this as a result of complicity on the part of the host organization, which wants them to have the time and opportunity to enjoy the local environment. I could have done the same. I don’t mean to suggest that they are insensitive to the different cultural norms here; they dress modestly, behave correctly, include the Vietnamese in some of their activities, and take an interest in the minorities. But in the end volunteer service will, for most of them, be just another one of life’s experiences, not rooted in any particular view of the world or specific ideas for its betterment. It will end when their assignment ends.
Without exception, and this may be a personal as much as a generational difference, they are almost completely ahistorical in outlook. With one exception, the student volunteers I encountered all come from European backgrounds. Without exception, they know and care little about their own Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman roots and modes of thought. Frequently I heard remarks like “their music is really weird” or “I don’t understand how they can eat dog”. Thus we often judge the customs and traditions of others without recognizing our own cultural biases. A more serious shortcoming I have come across in many places, including Vietnam, is the assumption that easy smiles are tokens of happiness amid the most desperate circumstances (“Well, they may be incredibly poor, but they seem quite content”). Ignored is the fact that they may lack clean drinking water or functional literacy. There is a failure to recognize that we easily confuse happiness (a dominant western value) with acceptance (predominant in eastern and other societies).
So our western heritage is a closed book to many student volunteers, one which they have no interest in opening. Asia and Africa offer a different cultural experience, with sights, sounds, tastes, smells that take them beyond their normal lives without requiring them to examine their assumptions about what they are experiencing. Europe is old, fusty, expensive, and in these days when travel to developing countries is increasingly easy, perhaps a bit intimidating. I always remind myself that if I don’t know who I am, culturally speaking, I will have a diminished ability to understand and appreciate the culture of others. And I’m quite sure that I am often guilty of unrecognized cultural judgments.
In themselves, these are not unmanageable problems. Many parts of the university where I was stationed lack the capability to provide better direction, so it is hard to expect young volunteers without significant management experience to do better.
A more serious concern is, in my view, a failure to recognize adequately their duty of care. Someone is footing the bill to put them in the field, and the host organization devotes considerable time and effort to supporting them. Vietnamese for the most part set an excellent example, working long hours for low pay, and taking evening and weekend classes in order to improve their qualifications. One wonders when we go home how our hosts judge us as workers.
I should stress that my perceptions of student volunteers may be unrepresentative, as they are based on observations covering a few weeks in one location. I did, however, also seek the views of a number of long-term volunteers, who by and large confirmed these impressions.
I hesitate to offer definitive advice on how to behave in the field. It’s certainly not reasonable to expect student volunteers to have management experience or judgment which is normally acquired over the span of a career. But tentatively I would suggest that any short-term volunteer, whether a greybeard like me or a student, should ask themselves five questions as a way of deciding how to behave in the field:
- Am I honouring the ideal of international service-learning in a way that recognizes the contribution, financial and otherwise, of others who have put me in the field and are supporting me while there?
- Do I think about when to act in full conformity with local customs, counterproductive as they may be, and when to resist them (as sensitively as possible) because they don’t produce transfer of knowledge or building of capacity, which are really what westerners can provide.
- How do I balance knowledge transfer against capacity building – when is a stony silence, a function of language problems, when a problem with concept and when a failure to engage, and how do I decide on the best strategy?
- What can I learn from other volunteers? Perhaps I am overly sensitive on this point, but without exception the student volunteers when with me failed what a young friend of mine calls “the question test”. I was always careful to ask them about their background and work in Vietnam, partly in friendship but also to help me understand how to be a better volunteer. Without exception, they did not ask me a single thing about my own experience, although I have learned certain lessons over my career that could have helped them deal with some of the obstacles they face. In other circumstances this would not trouble me. We are two generations apart in age, and they have their own lives to live and their own interests to cultivate. But as an anonymous French medievalist wrote “the advice of the old is like the winter sun: it sheds light but does not warm us.” Perhaps those like me can shed some light that would enrich the student volunteer experience.
- How can I continue to be helpful beyond the end of my mandate? It is one thing to keep in contact for purposes of friendship; it is something else altogether to continue to help once you are home. In any educational institution, real change takes a long time to occur, and requires extended effort to sustain. That friendship can be much richer and more valuable if it is based not only on personal affection but also on continuing professional support.
The future of international service learning lies with today’s student volunteers: you have the time, resources, intelligence and education to make a difference over the long term. Use them well.
