Giving Compass' Take:

• Tina Rosenberg explains how attempts to be philanthropic - including voluntourism and creating orphanages - harm the communities that are the supposed beneficiaries. 

• How can funders work with communities and researchers to ensure that they are supporting worthwhile projects that are situationally appropriate? 

• Learn more about Lumos. 

Every year, millions of people from wealthy nations travel to poor countries, hoping to do good. University students want to spend a school break or part of a summer giving back, perhaps even to improve their CV. Christians go with their churches for one- or two-week missions. All seek personal growth, connection to those less fortunate, and the satisfaction of making a difference. For many, the destination is an orphanage, where they aim to bring joy to needy children in the brief time they can spare.

The aspiration to help the most vulnerable children is a noble one, but the booming business of “voluntourism” sustains practices and institutions that actually do harm.

There is no such thing as a “good” orphanage, according to child development experts. Eighty years of research confirms that children do best in a family. They are far more likely to experience abuse, cruelty or neglect in an institution than in any other setting. Even in a well-run facility, children do not develop normally.

In wealthy countries, the institutionalization of children has almost completely stopped.

Almost every poor country, by contrast, still puts children in institutions, even though the vast majority of those children have families. Wealthy countries, who consider orphanages harmful for their own children, nonetheless provide a stream of charitable giving that makes orphanages viable businesses abroad. And orphanages need “orphans”. Parents may hand over children because they have special needs, or because the family can’t afford to send them to school. “It’s a huge pull factor: if they can get food, health care, education, specialized services, parents make a decision they think is in the best interests of the children,” says Shannon Senefeld, senior vice president for overseas operations at Catholic Relief Services.

According to a report by Lumos, a London-based group founded by JK Rowling that seeks to end institutionalization of children, one orphanage in Haiti, established by a US religious organization after the earthquake in 2010, kept children malnourished and living in filth, with no stimulation. Yet it collected donations averaging $10,000 (£7,700) a year per child – much of which ended up in the director’s bank account, a former staff member alleged. That institution, which Lumos believes was engaged in trafficking and selling children for adoption to families in wealthy countries, recruited children using a baby-finder, who convinced poor parents their children would be better off in the institution.

Read the full article about voluntourism by Tina Rosenberg at The Guardian.