The Voluntourist

Ken Budd’s The Voluntourist is a remarkable memoir about losing your father, accepting your fate, and finding your destiny by volunteering around the world for numerous worthy causes: Hurricane Katrina disaster relief in New Orleans, helping special needs children in China, studying climate change in Ecuador, lending a hand—and a heart—at a Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East, to name but a few. Ken's emotional journey is as inspiring and affecting as those chronicled in Little Princes and Three Cups of Tea. At once a true story of powerful family bonds, of sacrifice, of self-discovery, The Voluntourist is an all-too-human, real-life hero whom you will not soon forget.

In a 2014 essay that went viral, Pippa Biddle revealed the inequities and absurdities baked into voluntourism--the pairing of short-term, unskilled volunteer work with tourism. In the years since, Biddle has devoted herself to understanding the origins, intentions, and outcomes of a multibillion-dollar industry built on the premise of doing good, and she tracks that investigation in Ours to Explore. The flaws of voluntourism have included xenophobia, racism, paternalism, and a "West knows best" mentality. From exploitative orphanages that keep children in squalid conditions to attract donors to undertrained medical volunteers practicing their skills on patients in developing regions and to those looking for an inspiring selfie, Biddle reveals the hidden costs of the voluntourism complex. Along the way, readers meet inspiring activists and passionate community members, as well as thoughtful former voluntourists who still work to make a difference--just differently. Ours to Explore offers a plan for how the service-based travel industry can break the cycle of exploitation and suggests strategies for travelers who want to improve the places they visit for the long haul.

While appealing to the desire of tourists and volunteers to 'do good' while travelling, underlining orphanage tourism is the fact that the vast majority of children (over 80%) in orphanages and allied care institutions are not orphans. Instead, children are often placed in institutions due to poverty and hardship, and as victims of human trafficking. The first of its kind, this book highlights exploratory research that examines the links between modern slavery practices and orphanage tourism.

Travel is now more open to a greater number of people than ever, and travelers are often looking for new adventures and experiences. And yet with crises developing constantly around the planet, many travelers want to explore the world and do good at the same time. This book shows them how.

This book covers various aspects of leadership in critical situations and under extreme conditions. Today’s leaders often face challenging situations or unexpected difficulties, and mastering these requires a wide spectrum of competencies such as creativity, courage and empathy. Therefore, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach including both theoretical concepts and practical findings relevant to optimizing leadership in extreme situations. Issues such as why people act as they do in stressful and extreme situations, or what constitutes the nexus between leadership/followership, organizations, and culture etc., are addressed. Leadership under extreme conditions is a very complex topic and one that has been approached from a variety of perspectives. The contributions to this volume thus originate from various academic disciplines including political science, social sciences, psychology, and philosophy. Insights from the study of in extremis leadership can help researchers and practitioners understand the individual, team and contextual factors that influence leadership and, ultimately, organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Leadership in Extreme Situations is a collection of contributions by selected scholars and field experts. It addresses key issues of leadership, morale and cohesion, as well as ethical questions; provides an ideal entry into the complex world of advanced leadership; and serves as a practical guide for the successful implementation of modern leadership.

Volunteer Tourism is one of the major growth areas in contemporary tourism, where tourists for various reasons seek alternative goodwill experiences and activities. To meet this demand there has been a surge in volunteer programmes offered in range of destinations organized by a variety of charities and tour operators which is predicted to continue to grow in the future. Volunteer Tourism provides an in-depth analysis of the complex issues associated with traditional and contemporary volunteer tourism. Reflecting the growth in this phenomenon, this book provides a cohesive collection of chapters written from a range of international expert scholars and researchers. The theoretically rich, practically applied and empirically grounded contributions are based on current and diverse research in the area. This groundbreaking volume explores topics which have not been addressed in the literature before, such as the impact on host communities, introducing new areas and ideas to the field. The diverse range of themes are identified and addressed, including volunteer tourism and sustainability to, uniquely, the examination of volunteer tourism stakeholders – volunteers themselves, the host-to-guest exchange, and the organizations – and management of volunteers. These themes are examined in a range of international case studies, demonstrating the wide range of issues associated with volunteer tourism. This volume is a timely addition offering an innovative approach to the area. Volunteer Tourism will be of interest to both students and researchers interested in tourism, leisure and development, as well as non-academics, practitioners, NGOs government officials at all levels.