Disaster Tourism

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Comments

[Saundra]

J.

Thanks for your comments. If you had to give clear guidelines as to when a donor visit to a development or disaster site would be helpful to the villagers, what would those guidelines look like? What could a donor look for to know if the situation was appropriate or inappropriate?

One thing I've heard from villagers is that they want donors to really hear their needs. The other thing I've heard from villagers is their tired of people asking about their needs and then not acting on anything.

Perhaps the guidelines I provided should be modified to include something to the effect that if donors are going to visit the area, adequate time needs to taken to have meaningful conversations with the aid recipients. The donors should seriously consider what the villagers say and be open to changing their funding decisions based these conversations. Donors should determine how they will let the villagers know what, if any, action they've taken based on their conversation.

I'm open to thoughts and suggestions.

Cheers

[J.]

I'd actually see visits by donors as something other than development tourism or disaster tourism. But that's perhaps just a semantic nuance.

At any rate, donor visits to relief zones are development project sites can be a tough one. I think there are situations when it is not inappropriate and can actually have positive benefits - yes, for the beneficiaries! That said, such situations are not necessarily the norm. You have almost ruthlessly keep donors/VIPs out of the zone in those inappropriate situations... something often much harder for a small NGO with tentative funding to do.

[Siena]

How does one get donors on board with this type of mentality? In order to benefit from tax dollars and government aid, they are more focused on results than needs among beneficiaries. How do we shift away from short-term aid projects to long-term, integrated and inclusive 'development'?

[Oliver]

As a publicity person, eternally running after donors to get their attention and money, I nonetheless fully agree! Transparency is very important; so is accountability to donors. But properly educating them so they can make good decisions is our job, which we should be able to do without treating beneficiaries like animals at a zoo or allowing other to treat them in this way.

[Sterling]

I agree with your first statement regarding recipient needs being greater than those of the donor. But don't you think the donor should have an understanding of what's going on? I wouldn't consider education as a "need" of the donor, but more of a requirement. I've read the Aid Watch post about poverty tourism, and this post about missionaries: http://bit.ly/2GZjtH

I agree, people should never be treated as attractions; however, I think visitors should be educated before making good decisions regarding development and their donations. If visitors aren't educated properly, aren't their presence and donations basically useless? Your checklist addresses those points, and I believe these points benefit the recipients of any aid. That's why I think a donor's education is almost as important as the recipient's needs.

Ideally people shouldn't donate blindly, but they also shouldn't be invasive or ignorant when trying to "become educated" or "be cultured" or what have you.

I agree with your points, and I think this is a great post. I have a question for all: does this type of tourism help the local economy at all? I mean, all these people have to stay and eat somewhere. Or do they all come in from major cities?