Rethinking the true impact of voluntourism in line with new community development standards

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Authors
Parkes, Eleanor
Author ORCID Profiles (clickable)
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Grantor
Date
2018-12-19
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Type
Journal Article
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
volunteer tourism
voluntourism
host communities
Towards shared international standards for community development practice (IACD, 2018)
TSISCDP
International Association for Community Development (IACD)
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
standards
community development
Citation
Parkes, E. (2018). Rethinking the true impact of voluntourism in line with new community development standards. Whanake: The Pacific journal of community development 4(2), 90–101. ISSN 2423-009X Retrieved from: http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress
Abstract
The volunteer tourism market now represents over $2 billion annually but its impact is not yet adequately understood. Studies that have considered the impacts of voluntourism on host communities have had some significant limitations as well as very having mixed findings, highlighting both the potential benefits but also the costs of this increasingly popular form of travel. Voluntourism is now the fastest growing market in the tourism industry and it is essential we consider it critically to ascertain which voluntourism models are contributing to an outmoded north-south approach to development, and which are designed to support the capacity of local organisations. This paper will argue that with the recent publication of the IACD’s Towards shared international standards for community development practice document the time is right for a renewed and focused attempt to measure the impacts of volunteering and voluntourism on community development.
Publisher
Unitec ePress
DOI
Copyright holder
Unitec ePress
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Rethinking the true impact of voluntourism in line with new community development standards is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 New Zealand
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