Well said, but there are some things I think must be added. I think it is right to compare voluntourism to regular tourism and to judge it on its goal of increasing “local” cooperation. By your account, voluntourism should have the twin effects of increasing GDP (or the general success and efficient cooperation) of the members of the church group by a few percentage points and increasing the level of donations over many years to the voluntoured location.
When doing the math to calculate the cost-benefit analysis of these voluntourism projects we should actually write off the cost of travel because in our “voluntourism” model, we assume the travel was going to happen anyway. If that’s the case, then voluntourism is almost by definition a net-positive. So I agree we shouldn’t be too negative about it.
Nonetheless, I don’t think we should call voluntourism effective altruism. For something to be called effectively altruistic, we should be forced to take into account the costs of the program, and the cost of a week and a half in Haiti is $2000 per person. If we assume that a person experiences a financial gain of 2% per year because of the increased group cohesion in the States, that person would have to be making 100k per year to recoup the loss compared to inflation. If the person makes more money than that and donates additional gains to the poor of Haiti, then that pays off for both him and the people of Haiti positively.
I think under these assumptions, voluntourism only reaches the threshold of being effective, when very rich people are doing it. When you are giving tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars away per year anyway, voluntouring does not make a big percentage difference to your budget, but will likely help you give to more effective causes.
Well said, but there are some things I think must be added. I think it is right to compare voluntourism to regular tourism and to judge it on its goal of increasing “local” cooperation. By your account, voluntourism should have the twin effects of increasing GDP (or the general success and efficient cooperation) of the members of the church group by a few percentage points and increasing the level of donations over many years to the voluntoured location.
When doing the math to calculate the cost-benefit analysis of these voluntourism projects we should actually write off the cost of travel because in our “voluntourism” model, we assume the travel was going to happen anyway. If that’s the case, then voluntourism is almost by definition a net-positive. So I agree we shouldn’t be too negative about it.
Nonetheless, I don’t think we should call voluntourism effective altruism. For something to be called effectively altruistic, we should be forced to take into account the costs of the program, and the cost of a week and a half in Haiti is $2000 per person. If we assume that a person experiences a financial gain of 2% per year because of the increased group cohesion in the States, that person would have to be making 100k per year to recoup the loss compared to inflation. If the person makes more money than that and donates additional gains to the poor of Haiti, then that pays off for both him and the people of Haiti positively.
I think under these assumptions, voluntourism only reaches the threshold of being effective, when very rich people are doing it. When you are giving tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars away per year anyway, voluntouring does not make a big percentage difference to your budget, but will likely help you give to more effective causes.