Children's rights

Projects that include working with children, be it in schools, play clubs, recreational camps, or orphanages, are very popular among volunteers. However, volunteering, and “voluntourism” in particular, holds many risks for children.

Many tour operators offering volunteering projects have lax recruitment systems and do not carry out sufficient background checks when selecting their volunteers as customers usually pay considerable amounts of money for the experience. Volunteers are often not properly trained or prepared to work with children but still get to spend a lot of time alone with them. Furthermore, without proper preparation they may lack the cultural knowledge and understanding of traditions, behaviours and customs in their travel destination. The same applies for volunteers working with children in refugee camps.

Unqualified volunteers working with children can have adverse impacts on children’s development. Short-term assignments, as included in many voluntourism packages, may have negative effects on children as they are constantly given new reference people. Furthermore, there have been many reported cases of sexual and physical abuse and exploitation of children by volunteers who have taken advantage of the lack of control mechanisms and supervision on-site.

Several studies have shown that about 80% of the children who live in orphanages have at least one living parent. Orphanages have been found to create a demand for child trafficking. Some families sell their children to orphanages as a means of moving out of poverty. In some countries, fake orphanages created for the purpose of voluntourism have become a lucrative business. In some cases, parents, mostly living in rural areas, are deceived into paying for their children to go to an orphanage in the city, thinking that they will receive a good education there. Some tour operators have responded to this phenomenon by no longer offering volunteering in orphanages.