Is the wishful volunteer trip that young people are keen on a responsibility trip?

Yang Kejia and Shea are standing in front of the classroom, looking at the chattering children in front of them. Girls look a little shy, while boys have loud voices and curious expressions. "These children have dark skin but bright eyes." Yang Kejia still remembers the expressions on the children's faces when they met on the first day.

A sense of mission to embrace the world

This is a public welfare school called Smiling Heart in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Two "experience officers" who participated in the "Hedgehog Experience" international volunteer tour began their first international teaching activities. In the next five days, their main task is to help the children review their English before the final exam.

Facing a group of kindergarten teachers aged 6 to 15, two inexperienced teachers quickly entered the state and introduced themselves briefly. Everyone opened their textbooks and read and wrote silently ... This was the first day. The next day, Shay and Kejia tried to train children to connect words into sentences, and gradually mastered the different personalities and communication methods between classmates; On the third day, in order to increase the interaction between boys and girls, they set a rule, and boys and girls chose each other to answer questions, and the effect was immediate; On the fourth day, the little girl sitting in the last row quietly stuffed a small picture of the mermaid, which read "I love the teacher"; The last day is a time for farewell and celebration, happy singing, painting, taking photos and delivering packages. When Kejia takes you Creary out, the younger children can't help touching him, and the older children will stop them in Cambodian-in such a tough environment, this kind of understanding and obeying the rules is somewhat distressing.

Because of this, in just five days, Kejia and Shea felt full of warmth. Yang Kejia was fascinated by the children's clean eyes and smiles. He said that this is the simplest thing in the world and the most desirable thing. On the other hand, Shay said, "Being a hedgehog experience officer has made me explore Cambodia more deeply, not just as a tourist who takes photos and punches, but as an explorer."

For these young college students, this may be the first gift of voluntary travel to them: they have a more proactive starting point because of their sense of mission in their journey to the world, which makes them gain more in their travel. "Most young people who participate in volunteer travel have the initial intention of' altruism'." Li Yaping, the founder of Hedgehog, said, "The Hedgehog Experience will emphasize this awareness to college students who sign up. At the same time, we also hope that young people who sign up for the hedgehog volunteer tour really want to do something for the world. "

Of course, the way to "do something for the world" is not just teaching: Colin, who has worked for several years, chose the South African cetacean marine protection route. To this end, he spent a whole year's annual leave and lived in the South African coastal town of Nasner for three weeks. In the past 20 days, Colin went out to watch whales, chase seabirds, pick up garbage on the beach, play bungee jumping and skydiving with the help of local people, and camped in Szentvari Nature Reserve for three nights. At the same time, together with volunteers from the local marine protection agency, he classified the garbage found, wrote a report, went to sea to record the time and place where whales appeared, recorded the action law of each whale after breathing, and interpreted the action patterns of different whales to express their emotions with behavior analysis. Finally, the volunteer who loves wildlife concluded that he plans to take a diving license in the future. He also wants to learn to dive freely, dive underwater and observe humpback whales and sperm whales at close range. ...

An old question is: What kind of trip is really meaningful? Presumably, everyone will have their own answers, but there is no doubt that they will bury their expectations for the next trip in their hearts. From this perspective, whether learning to cook local dishes in Nepal, digging turtle eggs in Sri Lanka, or being an elephant shovel officer in Thailand; Whether it is a young student or an adult entering the society, the most precious significance of voluntary travel lies in broadening one's horizons and endowing the soul who is on the road for the first time with the talent of truly becoming a traveler: embracing the world, being curious, dreaming and loving.

"the biggest beneficiary"

Most volunteers travel from a desire for public welfare, but perhaps, they may not get the expected results.

If you search for the English word "Voluntourism" for volunteer travel on Twitter, there are almost as many questions and praises in the hot search results. The angle of praise is easy to understand, and the argument of critics is simple: Is volunteer travel really not a wishful public welfare show? How many people stay in a poor community for less than two weeks and play while working, is this really good for the local area?

Before discussing this issue, it is best to review the history of volunteer travel. VolunTourism comes from the combination of the words volunteer and tourism, which means the dual attributes of public welfare and tourism. At first, it was the charity activities of European missionaries that combined the two. In the Middle Ages, when the church and secular regime clashed, many religious groups organized missionaries to do good deeds in the surrounding areas to attract believers. "Doing good deeds" and "traveling in different places" were combined because they served the theocracy.

After the Renaissance swept through Europe, the influence of religion gradually declined, and people began to travel to seek knowledge. This phenomenon first appeared in Britain, and the atmosphere of educational travel became a social trend. In The Theory of Human Understanding published by 1690, John Locke, a famous British philosopher, first expounded the role of external environment in knowledge growth with philosophical logic, and the relationship between travel and education was established. 65438-0909 German teacher Richard Schirrmann found in practice that the combination of tourism and teaching is very important for cultivating talents. 19 12, the world's first youth hostel was born in Germany, and the German government also issued a series of preferential policies to facilitate young students to travel around the world.

Germans believe that the emergence of youth hostels is a great progress in modern education, and many schools even regard youth travel volunteer service as a rigid requirement in the academic system, and travel is once again linked to public welfare through education. 1953 international voluntary service organization (IVS) was established. Its first project is to send two young people to Asyut, Egypt, to help local farmers do some work related to poultry and dairy products. 1970s, the "gap year" tourism boom rose, and volunteer tourism projects took a ride on the college students' tourism boom. With the establishment of more non-profit organizations and similar projects, volunteer travel has become one of the important ways for young people to travel-because it is not only interesting, but also cool.

After entering the 2 1 century, volunteer travel has gradually developed into an interactive, continuous and interlocking travel industry: in order to meet the needs of most young students for overseas volunteer projects, a solid cooperation system has been formed through schools, enterprises, travel agencies and non-profit organizations, and the market has changed from the initial medium-and long-term volunteer travel products to diversified development, with short-term volunteer travel projects from 65,438+0 weeks to 65,438+0 months.

However, related problems have also emerged. More and more tourism public welfare projects do not really meet the needs of recipients, and even reduce the job opportunities of local people engaged in some industries; The prosperous market has spawned more unique experience projects. Travelers no longer just participate in animal protection or simple teaching projects, but begin to care about AIDS orphans, help Muslim women or support local community construction (mostly building dormitories, classrooms and other construction projects), but most of them obviously do not have the corresponding communication or construction skills.

"At first we liked it, then we hated it, and now we find it is very complicated, between great and bad, between good and bad." Nancy McGehee, a scholar engaged in tourism and hotel management research, commented on the development of volunteer travel in recent years, and pointed out the crux of the problem in her view: if the public welfare attribute of volunteer travel is not overemphasized, the problem will become much easier to understand as part of the gradual transformation of global tourism concepts and forms. She concluded, "travelers are always the ones who benefit the most from it-we need to realize this first and start from here."

"I didn't support short-term teaching before, but after taking part in the volunteer tour of Hedgehog in Cambodia, my opinion changed. Of course, regardless of the length of time, volunteers can't have fun, and they should prepare enough good content to bring to the children in advance. Only in this way can we truly feel that even in a short time, we can give our children some small changes, such as introverted children becoming more lively and more interaction between boys and girls, which not only have an impact on our children, but also have great significance for ourselves. "

Shea's feelings prove Nancy's point in a sense. From this point of view, the biggest benefit of travelers has always been related to the core proposition of voluntary travel, which was established more than 300 years ago in the era of John Locke and has not changed fundamentally so far: education.

Eris, the founder of EASIN International Volunteer Travel, also believes that the education of travelers is the deep embodiment of volunteer travel. She told the interface reporter that the main body that EASIN always insists on and pays attention to is travelers, and at the same time advocates travelers to take on more social responsibilities as much as possible from the perspective of public welfare.

"Many public welfare projects can be divided into specialized fields and non-specialized fields. Professional work should be entrusted to professionals, but this does not mean that short-term volunteers or volunteer travelers have no effect. " In response to some criticisms of domestic short-term volunteer tourism projects, Eris expressed his views to the interface reporter. For example, she said that many Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand and Cambodia, implement half-day teaching, and children have nothing to do after half-day classes. However, in addition to running all over the street or going home to do farm work, the existence of international volunteer schools gives them another choice: the school is free and open, and the teaching content is mainly interest teaching and English teaching, which will not increase the academic burden and is rare.

"We were also worried that the short-term teaching program would bring harm to local children, but later found that as long as a group of volunteers can persist, children will adapt faster than adults, and even take the initiative to ask, which country is the next batch of teachers? Many children who have stayed in school for a long time know more than our volunteers, such as German folk songs, Brazilian dances, and paper-cutting in China ... "

Therefore, in Eris' view, a mature model is the key to determine the local value of voluntary travel. Even if the individual's strength is weak, the whole system can only be improved through constant practice. "Facts have proved that consumption in travel can be transformed into creation, which will benefit the global public welfare." She said. After all, the way to look at and participate in travel from such a positive perspective is itself the embodiment of travelers' sense of responsibility.

Domestic Volunteer Tourism: Changes in Value

No matter how people view volunteer travel, no one will deny that it is an expanding market with great potential. Mintel, a well-known market research company, said in the survey report "Voluntourism Worldwide" released on 20 16 that it is difficult to measure the ecological quantity of volunteer travel due to the lack of accurate data collection and relatively vague definition, but there is no doubt that this is one of the fastest growing tourism market segments. In an analysis report in May 438+10, Business media Inc listed the volunteer travel industry as one of the eight industries with explosive growth in 20 18.

The huge market volume comes from potential travelers, but what kind of group of volunteer travelers is still inconclusive abroad. Ethan Gelber, a travel writer, once said that volunteer travelers cover a wide range of people. The motivation of speculating travel elements, budget setting and choosing volunteer projects is also extremely scattered, and it is not limited by the age of the crowd. In fact, there are few statistics to support these inferences.

If we only look at China, the earliest origin of volunteer travel is also related to college students' education: in 2003, the "Western Plan of College Students' Volunteer Service" launched by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Ministry of Education is usually considered as the starting point of volunteer travel in China; In 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan and the Beijing Olympic Games made domestic college students more brave to go out of the city and volunteer where they needed it. After 20 10, with the travel craze popular among young people, such as "just leaving" and "poor travel", "volunteer travel" was gradually endowed with a sense of literature and art, mainly in the form of working in hotels and inns in popular tourist destinations such as Yunnan and Tibet.

Li Yaping, the founder of Hedgehog, recalled that in 20 15, the newly established Hedgehog just started to do summer internship. Later, it was suggested that in addition to serious interns, we hedgehogs should also do something fun, which immediately received a warm response from everyone. Li Yaping asked some friends for help, released a new activity, changed jobs and stayed in three hotels: Lijiang, Dali and Lhasa. Unexpectedly, once the activity was launched, the applicants immediately crowded with servers, which made the hedgehog find a new focus. Therefore, following the internship of hedgehog, hedgehog, which has just been established for three months, quickly launched a brand-new hedgehog experience product line.

Undoubtedly, the travel mode of "working for accommodation" bears the obvious mark of "poor travel", but nowadays college students in China do not choose to travel voluntarily just to save money. With the emergence of more alternative products in the market, the value symbol given to volunteers to travel has gradually deviated from the early romantic "escape from life" or self-seeking, but paid more attention to the work content itself according to their own needs.

Ke Xinzi, a senior this year, has participated in two international volunteer tours of "Step Forward". The first time was an elephant protection project in Thailand, and the second time was to help turtles in Bali. At the same time, she invited her family. "It is the happiest thing to learn a lot of knowledge and do useful things for lovely animals." Ke Zixuan told reporters that she had calculated an account. She spent eight days in Bali this summer. Except for the work arrangement for seven mornings, she is free to play the rest of the time. There is relatively ample time for her and her family to visit all the scenic spots in Bali, but it costs nearly 65,438 yuan +0.5 million yuan per person. "No matter from the material or spiritual point of view, the most valuable part of volunteer travel lies in the work content. If you just want to travel, you may wish to choose to travel freely. " This "senior" volunteer girl has been using her spare time to participate in welfare homes, libraries and other activities since her sophomore year. She said that the next time she chooses to travel as a volunteer, she will first consider whether the work content attracts her.

Feelings, innovation or persistence?

At least at present, young and enthusiastic volunteer travelers in China show amazing seriousness and concern for the overall work during their travels, but there are also extremely personalized differences in their choices and budgets. If you want to know their preferences, you might as well take products as the starting point to explore how domestic volunteer travel companies provide young people with products with various selling points and attractions.

Although it has not been established for a long time, the flexible hedgehog experience has rapidly expanded the extension of volunteer travel in view of the fact that domestic volunteer travelers rarely choose long-distance travel. While actively introducing conventional products such as Thailand, Laos and Sri Lanka, it has also developed more domestic travel routes. For example, in April this year, hedgehog organized a visit to Yunnan ancient culture village; During the National Day, Hedgehog Experience and Tongji University's "Design Harvest" team jointly held a rural art experience activity in Chongming Island, Shanghai. Young students and foreign artists graffiti on wheat fields, make handmade tofu and enjoy the joy of pastoral farming on modern farms.

In addition to short and light products, hedgehogs also have H&; Deep products. In May this year, Hedgehog recruited volunteer travelers for the second time and went to the core area of "Three Parallel Rivers" World Heritage Center of Lijiang Health and Environment Research Center (H&; E) Learn the logic of mutual benefit between human community and nature. Different from regular volunteer travel, the working cycle of environmental protection projects in Lijiang is mostly 2 months, 6 months or even longer, which requires more professional community research and H& assistance. Yi Deng, Chairman of E Research Center, completed the auxiliary task of this project. The famous scholar who has been engaged in the environmental cause all his life believes that "the hedgehog experience provides young people with an opportunity to observe, think and experience at close range, to understand the current rural areas and farmers in China, and then to ask their own questions."

"The land under our feet, especially the vast rural areas of China, actually contains many interesting, valuable and worth exploring projects." Li Yaping said that the Hedgehog Experience will also launch a rural volunteer tour in Inner Mongolia next year, which is a rare process of getting close to nature for every "urban child who has never lived in the countryside".

Hedgehog's rural volunteer travel is not only flexible in form, but also full of deep feelings. Whether it is returning to the countryside or inheriting ancient skills, it is a very appealing topic for young people now. Today, Hedgehog website has more than 6.5438+million registered users and more than 2 million WeChat fans. Hedgehogs with huge traffic are also further refining the community and enhancing the stickiness of fans, such as recruiting experience officers or travel experts to participate in more distinctive theme trips. After Yao Shun, a traveler, participated in the test drive in Australia, the recorded video was played in seconds, totaling 467,000 times.

EASIN, who cooperated with Chow Tai Fook not long ago, started the recruitment of "Dark Creator" public welfare travel in late September, and initiated a discussion topic: How do you plan to let blind children "see" pandas? The 20-day event accumulated about 2 million exposures on Weibo platform and 20,000 exposures on WeChat. In the end, EASIN selected five winners from hundreds of applicants and left for Sichuan on 10, so that blind children and children could experience the feeling of "seeing" pandas through the "four senses teaching" course besides vision. Although the trip is only two days, it is self-evident for travelers and children.

Volunteer travel is entertaining and colorful, but how to really do a good job of routes and operate products requires travel companies to operate according to their own characteristics. Just as the hedgehog experience deeply attracts the cohesion of young fans with its infectious vitality and feelings, or EASIN takes "innovation" as a selling point and promotes it with whimsy, there are also travel propositions that insist on the purity of public welfare and try to let volunteer travelers spontaneously "go deep into the local area", such as Lean in International Volunteer Travel. Aimee, the founder, told the interface reporter that most of Lean In's volunteer travel products still maintain a relatively traditional feature: organizing travelers to participate in volunteer work in the morning for half a day, and completely blank in the afternoon, so that travelers can fully explore and experience the local culture themselves.

Lean In has also received some feedback from registered travelers on accommodation conditions, but they still insist that volunteer travelers stay in local families as much as possible when arranging their trips, rather than hotels with better conditions. In Aimee's view, "traveling and living like local people" is an important part of volunteer travel.

Global volunteer cooperation network: feedback and exchange

In addition to emphasizing the way volunteers travel, Step Forward also pays attention to the impact of its products on their destinations. According to Aimee, every volunteer travel product launched by Lean In will give priority to cooperation with non-profit organizations to ensure that the income of volunteer travel products can really feed back local public welfare undertakings, instead of letting most of the funds flow into the pockets of travel suppliers. She said that this is the way that "Step Forward" has always adhered to. Although non-profit organizations are far less professional than travel agencies in terms of itinerary arrangement and design, what Lean In should do is to help them improve the planning and operation of volunteer tourism products as much as possible, and ensure that these organizations have reliable and sustainable sources of funds while meeting the needs of travelers.

Of course, Aimee also said that emphasizing public welfare does not mean ignoring experience. Lean In will send people to inspect local non-profit organizations comprehensively at the initial cooperation stage of each project, and whether they have the will and ability to arrange travelers to participate in volunteer activities, and will set certain standards. For example, public welfare activities need to account for 80%~90% of the itinerary.

On a global scale, domestic volunteer travel agencies are not only exporting volunteers, but also a part of the global cooperation network, bridging the gap between volunteers and international public welfare organizations that need volunteers around the world. Of course, it is not easy for different institutions to coordinate with each other and achieve a common goal. Eris told reporters that in the very early days of EASIN's establishment, Kenya's products had just been established for less than half a year, and they had replaced five local leaders, but even so, they still could not fully guarantee that the project would be implemented to their satisfaction, mainly due to cultural differences such as indifference to time concept and weak sense of service. "The person in charge can be late 1 hour himself, and then tell me that he just had bread upstairs." Eris has been crying and laughing since she talked about this experience. Later, they found a Chinese partner from the local area, and then he trained and set up a special team to completely solve this problem. Today, EASIN has hired overseas employees in about 80% of the project sites to ensure a smooth and safe experience for travelers to the greatest extent.

The experience of working hard with non-profit organizations also made Eris learn to look at the way of cooperation with them from different angles. She told the reporter another story. She cooperated with many bird protection experts and found that many bird dealers had done bird business. In the process of getting along with them, she gradually realized that many of them had no good education and had been forced to make a living by catching birds before, but there was another possibility. "If we help them ensure their lives, they can help us finish the work of protecting birds." She said that this is exactly what practitioners who need to engage in volunteer travel should do. Facing the present situation, how to do more things for non-profit organizations and institutions.

So in addition to serving travelers, EASIN is also helping many non-profit organizations in its own way, especially for many animal protection institutions in China that have done a lot of things silently but few people know about them. Besides giving material support and sending volunteers, EASIN pays more attention to telling their stories to more people.

"We know what young people like to watch and where the pain points that can stimulate their interest and enthusiasm are. Therefore, we will repackage these stories and make meaningful communication cases. There are often tens of millions of communication traffic on the Internet. " EASIN makes use of its own advantages to become a bridge between the public, travelers and non-profit organizations: Tianjin Port Wetland, located on the coast of the Yellow Sea, will build the world's first "migratory bird airport" or serve as a unique "turtle spawning ground" in China. How Huizhou Turtle Bay welcomes the first turtle to land to spawn in a year will be transformed into innovative and educational volunteer travel products through EASIN's planning. "We are looking for a good and sustainable public welfare education model. Eris concluded: "After all, young people today are in great need of public welfare education. "

From niche to high-end

Volunteer travel is getting hotter and hotter, but it will still belong to the minority category for a long time to come. Moreover, with the trend of parent-child travel becoming younger and more open, many children have traveled all over the world at an early age. How can we convince them who have been "well informed" since childhood that they still believe in the dream of volunteer travel?

According to Eris, the core value of volunteer travel lies in education, and the way out lies in high-end customization. She introduced a case of customized education travel between EASIN and international primary schools to reporters: they led more than 20 primary school students to Sri Lanka, and set up a series of tasks integrating public welfare, education and games, such as protecting elephants and environmental heroes, just like "fighting monsters to clear customs", and finally found mysterious treasures as customs clearance rewards-but the treasures are actually. Eris said that these courses are different from popular study tours, because every detail of the trip can be designed from beginning to end, which can be improved and adjusted through children's feedback surveys, or its value can be evaluated through regular follow-up.

Hedgehog Experience is constantly upgrading its products, and they have set their sights on Argentina. According to Wei, the operation director of Hedgehog Experience, they are about to start a week-long English teaching tour in Buenos Aires, which will also increase the number of countries where Hedgehog has its own camp in the world to 12-you know, at least in China, there are very few volunteer trips to South American countries, which may mean that more volunteer travel agencies will appear in the future.

Image source: Hedgehog Experience, EASIN International Volunteer Travel, Lean In, Shay