Analyzing The Documentary 'The Voluntourist's Dilemma'

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Rethinking tourism and volunteerism Travel can be a wonderful, beneficial and learning experience for people. When people go abroad with the intention to help and serve as volunteers, they are taking a step back to consider others. I think that tourism is a powerful way to learn about other cultures and people. Both the article and the documentary provided me with interesting material to think about, especially as I plan my trip abroad. I agree with a lot of the things that were said in the article The Voluntourist's Dilemma. I think that Pippa Biddle had a lot of interesting thoughts about both tourism and volunteerism. There is a fine line between helpful volunteering and unhelpful volunteering. For the first two sections, What it Costs Communities Abroad and The Economics of Volunteer Travel, I struggled to understand where the author was coming from. I believe that she made some good points and that a majority of the time volunteers are unaware of their true harmful impact. No …show more content…
The documentary showed the negative aspects of tourism. My main takeaway from the documentary was that it is always important to be considerate of others. It was interesting to watch the two cultures collide. The way the tourists interacted with the people of New Guinea was troubling to watch. It is important for tourists to be educated. For example, many of the artisans in New Guinea were offended when he tourists tried to haggle and did not want to pay the full price for the product. The idea of asking for a second price seems like a very strange concept, and I can understand its offensive nature. The film showed people who were most likely unaware of how insensitive they were being. I do not think that they were bad people and wanted to offend the natives by haggling or taking photographs, but they were just culturally

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