Over the last two months, I have had the opportunity to embark myself on a fascinating journey and, taking advantage of my groupmates’ wise guide and advice, to discover the challenges and penuries that novice volunteers will encounter in their own journey. In this final blog, I will re-visit my previous contributions to our hands-on communication blog project, “A Better Volunteer”, and try to show my conclusions and reflections upon a topic of paramount importance for the humanitarian sector.
The traditional one-to-one relation between development and economic growth has given way to a more holistic understanding of the term that encompasses social, environmental and economic wellbeing. Among other theories, Kleine’s approach proffers the idea of development as the freedom of choice – personal, social, economic and political – which a person may value most. In this context, ICT4D work as invaluable catalyzers for human advancement to help people achieve different ‘degrees of empowerment’ regarding choice capabilities. Needless to say, the volunteering sector has been at the cutting edge of ICTs in their strife to ameliorate community life conditions, taking into consideration their impact on the quality and quantity outcomes of volunteering agency.
Globalization has brought about a new dimension to our lives since everything is to hand in this shrinking world where technology is making a real difference (for the better?). However, when you think of volunteering, the first image that springs to mind is this stereotype of young and idealistic Westerners who, eager to live the real story, embark themselves in a fascinating overseas adventure. (I beg the reader’s pardon, perhaps I should have written down voluntourism instead of volunteering).
I always remember this Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece while having to deal with an unpleasant situation from which I would rather stay away. His dolly zoom effect replicates perfectly the uncomfortable sensation that you experience when your stomach flinches and the subsequent spinning of the head begins.
Marta was about to finish her studies in medicine when she, along with a bundle of fellow doctors-to-be, decided to spend her summer holidays in the Philippines. Blue-eyed and blonde, short and fragile, she is my little niece and the apple of my eye. But she is also self-assured and far stronger than the initial impression that her fragile appearance conveys… And when she felt the spur-of-the-moment drive for joining a humanitarian cause, for living the volunteering experience, and finally, for enjoying two additional weeks in the paradisiacal archipelago, no one in the world was capable of stopping her from crossing the planet. Once back home, she brought her baggage full of countless emotive stories, joy and tears, gratitude from and towards the Filipino people, a worrying sunburn, and hundreds of digital pictures already posted on Facebook and Instagram.
