Don’t Volunteer (Yet)
Before you go on and on about how volunteering changed your life for the better, ask yourself, how did it affect the people that were on the opposite end of the table? In other words, how did your actions affect the communities that were involved in the volunteering project/program? While it can be important to reflect on how volunteering has affected yourself, it’s more important to reflect on the impact your work has had.
This idea of ethical volunteering is volunteering that takes into account the experience that volunteering has on those that volunteers work with. Rather than assuming what the community wants, discussions surrounding service in their community should make sure to include members and knowledge of that community.
While service might have good intent, there are types of service that can actually be harmful. Poverty porn is the practice of highlighting extreme poverty and famine in order to raise funds for a cause. While this does raise money for the cause, poverty porn often dehumanizes communities into helpless victims rather than people with dignity and stories. It plays on people’s guilt and their desire to be “saviors” to these communities. It also often oversimplifies their circumstances into something that can’t be solved with just money. Rather than portraying people like this, people who truly want to make a change can include these people’s stories and solutions that they have.
Taking all of this into account, ANova tries to learn about the communities that we’re working with. At our school sites, our curriculum committee has at least one committee member assigned to each one, writing customized lesson plans for them. With our lab assisting sites, where we work with existing classrooms, you can find the ANova mentors collaborating with the teacher to improve their mentorship and effectiveness. Outside of the classroom, mentors learn about mental health issues, gender inequality, gentrification, and other issues in the tech space through our Decal committee’s weekly meetings.
Ethical volunteering begins with discussion and education. By including the communities that you aim to help, you are being of service to that community, rather than imposing your own ideals and expectation on them.
