What is the problem? 
 
Over the previous years, International Volunteering has become an attractive opportunity for students, however several studies have shown it is not always beneficial for the host communities involved. 
Volunteering overseas can provide a wide range of experiences and there’s several charities that work alongside Student Union’s already to provide these opportunities. However, there are several independent third-party organisations that arrange volunteering trips that potentially can cause more harm than benefit to communities; this can be due to poor planning or a lack of understanding of the culture. 
Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) recognises the “valuable and compelling academic research that demonstrates the detrimental impacts that volunteer contact can have on institutionalised children” and challenges the growing gap-year volunteering market stating it currently caters more for students than the local community. 
However, this is not to say that all international volunteering is detrimental to host communities. There are plenty of graduate and gap-year organisations that provide well-planned projects working in partnership with the host communities. 
Students and student groups wishing to take part in international volunteering can find themselves inundated with offers from several different organisations and can find themselves uninformed on how to ensure their project is sustainable and beneficial to all. 

What could be the Solution?

Ideas for Implementation

To work alongside Student Unions, Raising and Giving societies and volunteering organisations to establish accessible guidelines and information around international volunteering. 
Having accessible information allows a platform for independent student projects and Student Union organised trips to ensure their work is ethical, sustainable and beneficial for all involved. 
Allow students, student groups and the global community to have freely accessible information on organisations that deal with international volunteering/gap-year opportunities, which in turn allows for greater informed choice.   
Collate information on reputable, ethical, and moral organisations and create guidelines for student’s, student groups, and student’s unions, to use when they look to engage with international volunteering opportunities. 

DPC Notes

Implementation of policies are the work of officer teams so the solutuions in this proposal have been moved into an ‘ideas for implementation’ section. Some minor changes to wording.