Understanding and Engaging with Development through International Volunteering

Abstract

Understanding development issues and finding a space to interpret and debate our roles as citizens, consumers and individuals towards greater global justice are complex and contested. In this paper, I consider engagement in development through education-based international volunteering and report on a case study of a 9-month course designed to provide development education in preparation for a 2-month period of international volunteering. I argue that through opening spaces for dialogue and experiential learning, international volunteering, accompanied by critical development education, has the potential to address questions about what responsible development might mean, and how we can actively contribute to it.

The Relationship Between Experiential Learning and Career Outcomes for Alumni of International Development Studies Programs in Canada

“…To improve programs, Stirling et al (2017) recommend that explicit learning activities be established to help students integrate and connect their internship experience with relevant theory and coursework (p. 41). Other research draws similar conclusions about the need to link theory to practice in order for students to derive maximum educational benefit from experiential learning programs (Eames & Coll, 2010;Nevison, Drewery, Pretti, & Cormier, 2016;Sides & Mrvica, 2007;White & Devereux, 2017), including the ability to think critically about what "responsible development" means and how it can be fostered (Brown, 2015).…”

Embodied experiences in international volunteering: power-body relations and performative ontologies

“…With such a small sample, we make no generalisable claims. Indeed, specifics such as destination, pedagogies and longevity of placement are (amongst others) important factors in volunteering's staging of the North-South encounter (for example : Brown, 2015;Simpson, 2004). Rather, we show that these embodied relationships can be highly significant to some volunteers, from there our analysis examines how researchers' interpretations of the data can then take these experiences in different directions, for which we draw on relevant research literature to situate and complement our data.…”

“…More specific to the case of volunteering, we argue for making research sensitive to the nascent potentials of the body's intersubjectivities across structural difference. The political stakes are high: in research on volunteering, the responsibilities of performative ontology opens writing to the possibilities of the rich potentials of solidaristic, 'enlivened' embodiments of volunteer-host relations (Griffiths, 2014a;2015;Smith et al, 2010). We might also explore the ways that volunteering can itself be an 'outside ' -or, after Gibson-Graham (2008), a 'diverse economy' -where social relations with hosts are not subject to the same market forces that shape more straightforwardly capitalist forms of tourism (Mosedale, 2012).…”

“…Recognising the body's importance to encounter, research on international volunteering and embodied relations offers an analogous range of interpretations: from 'poor but happy' rationalisations (Crossley, 2012), neoliberal affective economies of subjectivity (Vrasti, 2011;Mostafanezhad, 2013) and 'paternalistic' relations of care (Sin, 2010), to emergent 'shared aspirations for social justice' (Crabtree, 2008), awareness raising (Hanson, 2010), transformative learning (Brown, 2015) and even 'transcendence' of uneven structures of power (Griffiths, 2014a).…”

Practitioner perspectives on learning for social change through non-formal global citizenship education

“…Non-formal activities included youth work sessions, seminar series with a focus on a particular development issue, workshops, public talks, film showings with debates, stalls at sustainability festivals, training for international volunteers, student action groups and more. More detailed accounts of the activities conducted by the case study organisations are available elsewhere (Brown, 2015a;Brown, 2015b); however, to set the scene, Box 1 provides two short practitioner vignettes. Global youth worker -Britain Jenny worked for a development education centre which ran workshops for teachers and the public on global issues and engaged in projects with established groups on issues such as diversity.…”