Perceptions of the Role of Short-Term Volunteerism in International Development: Views from Volunteers, Local Hosts, and Community Members

Table 2

Perceptions of short-term volunteerism.

Themes	Local organization	Local community	Foreign volunteers
Perceived value
Big “Impact” (general/vague)	“Yes [the work of volunteers] is relevant to the community. Their work brings much value.”	“They can help with everything.”	“Potential benefits are huge.”
Empower community		“[Volunteerism] promotes [community] awareness of health facilities.”	“We should not make the community beggars. There is a need to empower people.”
Provide human support (bear witness)	“Volunteers act as witnesses to the conditions of the bateyes.”		“When volunteers come, they spread the word to the people they know and the foreign teams that come will multiply in number.”
Provide specific expertise	“Medical volunteers are highly sought after. There is a dire need for medical help and expertise from OB/GYN, dentists, psychologists.”	“Medical teams can provide care at lower cost.”	“Teams come to help people with diabetes, anemia, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.”
	“[Volunteer graduate students] increase treatment and research capacity.”		“[The local doctors] don’t have the education or resources for preventative [family planning] measures so tubal ligation [service offered by the volunteer medical team] takes care of that.”
Provide material support	“The volunteer teams provide materials to the hospital.”	“Teams are important to health of community because they bring good medicine. Some of the teams bring food or medication which is less expensive than at the local hospital.”	“Partnerships increase the ‘cheerleading’ effect, where more teams come down and provide more resources.”
	“The volunteer teams bring supplies.”		“Teams come with resources.”
	“They bring funding.”		“Volunteer doctors bring equipment.”
			“Volunteer teams are very necessary, especially for the bateyes. Lots of medicines are distributed.”
Expand capacity of organization	“They [volunteers] bring increased capacity to the hospital.”
	“There is knowledge translation from foreign doctors to local doctors.”
	“Volunteers provide education to both local students and doctors, which is very important.”
Fills a (perceived) need/service gap	“The need is great in a poor country.”	“It’s good for the community, as the community has a lot of health needs.”	“Due to the logistics that are incurred by promoting, planning and doing the surgery, [the volunteers] provide capacity [to the hospital].”
		“Teams are useful because there are poor people who don’t have any opportunities to go to the hospital.”	“New construction wouldn’t happen unless volunteers arrive and hire local labourers.”
		“Teams give treatment to those that can’t afford health care or to those that can’t afford to go to faraway hospitals.”	“Teams provide extra love to the children in the bateyes.”
Fills void left by lack of local volunteer “culture”	“It is sad that the locals do not engage in their own community. There is a need to engage the local community.”
Benefits to volunteer	“It helps the volunteer.”		“It was a rewarding time that was beneficial to the community. I am extraordinarily grateful to have participated.”
	“Teams help enhance the students’ self-worth.”		“The feeling of giving is better than the feeling of receiving.”
			“[Volunteering] brings students outside of their comfort zones and experience culture shock. It trains high school students to live in cross-cultural situations.”
			“It’s an adventure, it’s not a day job.”
Other	“Partnerships are beneficial to the community. Example, with American universities, this allows for building a network, or friendly partnerships, that are less formalized.”		“We help the community grow and become more stable.”
	“Volunteers are just a piece of the puzzle.”		“[Volunteer teams help to] broaden the resource network of the community.”
Perceived harms
Harms to community		“Some people don’t get volunteer services because they’re working in the fields. They come back when it’s late and the volunteers are gone.”	“Some people felt they didn’t need help. I heard trash-talking from local community members who did not know I understood Creole. They said, ‘Why do we need medicines from these white people? We will get rid of those when we get home.’”
		“Sometimes people fight over the limited resources brought by the teams.”	“[Volunteerism] is becoming a bit of a ‘cottage industry’. I’m worried the pool of volunteers might dry up.”
Harms to volunteer	“Some work done by prior teams is ‘undone’, during continual developments, and when those team come down, they cannot see the fruits of their labour, which can be disheartening to that team.”		“Young teenage boys in the bateyes are very flirtatious and want to have sex. Volunteers are naive, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. If dangerous things happen because of flirting, the organization could withdraw from the bateyes.”
Perceptions of volunteers
Quality	“We [the locals] will never be same, you [the foreign volunteers] will always be higher.”		“The quality of international doctors is perceived as being better than the local doctors.”
	“More quality is brought by foreign medical teams. We have different experiences so we have different skill sets.”		“[Volunteers] bring North American quality [services] to the Dominican Republic.”
Motivations	“[The volunteers] see the dire needs in the bateyes. They see the children, who have nutritional issues.”	“They see the poverty and they want to help out.”
		“They want to play [with the kids] and they want to do good.”
Limitations of volunteers		“They usually cannot cater for workers’ needs, specifically the male sugarcane workers.”