Beyond the Trip: Make Your Volunteering Count Long After You’ve Left

​“Take me home,” little Akena said.

My heart wrenched. That Ugandan boy’s question cut deep and left me reeling.

“I’ll be back,” I blurted. I didn’t mean to lie. I truly believed I'd return, but 15 years later, I never did. I still think about that boy. I meant well, but good intentions don't soften the ache of being left behind.

A few years later I spoke with a Brazilian care leaver (another word for someone who grew up in an orphanage). She explained it through the lens of trust, how it is built and then broken.

She said volunteers would come, shower her and the other children with hugs, kisses, and gifts, but just as quickly as they became attached, the newcomers were gone again. She told me how she learned to hate that feeling of false hope and false belonging.

One day everything was joy and laughter, and the next she was back to feeling like one of many; purposeless, longing for the stability and consistency that only a loving family can provide. Over time she began to withdraw in an attempt to protect her heart from getting too excited at visitors’ arrivals or too crushed on their departure.

This is where some of the most complicated dynamics of volunteer and mission trips lie. The experience is often deeply meaningful for those visiting the orphanages, leaving them with a sense of accomplishment, purpose, and even faith lived out tangibly.

But at what cost?
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We learn through experience, but when our experience comes at the expense of children, families, or communities, we have to ask, is it truly for the best?

I remember while sharing these ideas at a missionary training centre, someone responded, “Are you telling me I can’t play with the kids?”

That question was telling. The person felt these ideas would take away from their experience. They didn’t realise what they wanted might not be what is best for the children.

It’s never easy to tell someone excited to volunteer that sometimes the most loving thing they can do is give up the fun parts of their trip. But as Dan Hope from the charity SFAC once said, 

“We don’t play games with people’s lives.

Bringing these ideas to a room full of people hopeful to bounce babies on their laps and blow bubbles made me feel like a killjoy. But it was a truth worth sharing, even if I haven’t always communicated it perfectly.

Someone once said to me, “Ah, you’re the anti-orphanage guy,” and I realised how much I had failed to communicate.

I wasn’t trying to make people anti-orphanage. I wanted them to be pro-family. It’s like saying a fitness instructor is anti Big Mac; that’s not quite right. They’re pro-healthy living, and that naturally leads to fewer Big Macs.

My hope is the same, that volunteers and missionaries become not anti-orphanage but pro-family and pro-community. I want to encourage volunteering and mission trips that strengthen families and the communities around them, rather than unintentionally fuelling separation.

“Wait a minute,” you might think. “Orphanages causing separation? Surely that’s backward?”

It sounds strange, but studies have shown that orphanages often create “orphans.” Between 80 and 90 percent of children in orphanages have a living parent. That leads to a crucial question, the same one that drove the Lost Kites documentary,

“If so many of these children have parents, why aren’t we helping those families?”

Most children in orphanages aren’t there because of bad parents. Many parents love their children deeply and simply want the best for them. They see these institutions, often run by foreigners, as places of opportunity. The thinking goes, “These people must know better than me. They have nice rooms, they teach English, they can give my child a better future.”

That kind of reasoning leads to heartbreaking decisions, to give up a child, believing it is for their good. And here lies another paradox, the better the orphanage looks, the more likely families are to place their children there. The nicer the beds, the more impressive the facilities, the more volunteers who visit, the more credibility it gains, and the more families feel it is the best option.

So you end up with two groups of well-meaning people, families making painful choices for children they deeply love, and orphanage staff working tirelessly to improve the facilities, often unaware that each improvement can become one more reason for another child to be separated from their family.
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My hope is that volunteers borrow a lesson from the medical field, to do the most good with the least harm. The work might be quieter, less glamorous, fewer views on social media, but it is the kind that lasts, 

because real change happens not when we hold a child for a day, but when we help a family hold them for life.

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Author: Samuel Rich

39-year-old British Filmmaker. Advocate For Child Protection, Family Strengthening & Care Reform.

www.samuelrich.com

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