The experience of international humanitarian volunteering

Abstract

This study is about the experience of international humanitarian volunteering. It aims to explore sociological the many facets that such life-altering experience involves.

This work indicates that participants are motivated to engage in international humanitarian volunteering for an array of reasons, which mainly combine altruism and egoism. Undoubtedly, religion is embedded throughout the experience because of values and practice. The goal for many volunteers is to achieve better humanitarian development in the global south, which this study suggests that some models of development are better than others. A significant factor of such an experience is travelling to distant places, which is expected to imply the encounter with ‘otherness’. This difference can either be reinforced or normalised. Finally, this study suggests that without ensuing self-transformation, these experiences are futile.