About Ethical Service

Consider the following questions, adapted from the Fair Trade Learning Standards, to ensure a partnership relationship:

• Think about community impact. Does the service program work hand in hand with a wide range of leaders in the community you are serving?
• Do community members have clear teaching and leadership roles as well as clear roles in financial distribution, driving research direction, process, and publication, with fair authorship rights?
• Are visiting volunteers taking away opportunities from local young people and students?
• Do multiple community members and program leaders share the same long-term goals?

• Does the service experience include pre-service training and orientation about the history, culture, language, and power structures present in the community or population with which you are working? Have you made efforts yourself to study the country, community, or neighborhood where you’re going? Do you understand the role that the U.S. or secular or religious groups have played in the communities you are now visiting?
• Does the service experience have opportunities throughout your service for you to reflect on and critically consider your experiences?
• After the service experience, do students continue structured reflection and commit to concrete action to continue their service?

• Does the service experience help support community organizations - by renting space in their buildings, for example?
• Does the service experience patronize local restaurants, host families, or locally-owned housing options when hosting traveling volunteers?
• Does the service experience avoid the distribution of free services or products when doing so would disrupt local business or employee opportunities?
• Is the service experience having volunteers do work for free when they could be providing a job for a local community member?

• Are vulnerable populations clearly protected through appropriate safeguards and relevant training for all individuals involved in the partnership?
• Does the service experience require protections such as background checks, skill-level evaluations, confidentiality training, and other training before allowing volunteers to interact with individuals of a vulnerable population?
• Does the service experience last long enough that the benefits of direct volunteer interactions in the community will outweigh the stress of volunteer turnover—a suggested 4 week minimum for working with children (Volunteering with Children)?
• Are volunteers trained in appropriate use of social media such that community members' dignity, privacy, and consent are preserved? (See the Radi-Aid Social Media Guide: http://www.rustyradiator.com/social-media-guide/)

• Do recruitment or other outreach materials serve an educational function, shaping expectations for community-driven, partnership-based engagement?
• Does it reflect a “white savior” dynamic instead of showing the dignity of people in host communities partnering with outsiders to learn together (Cole, 2012)?
• Compare their photos to the examples of ethical photography from the GlobalSL website: http://globalsl.org/ethical-photography-contest-4-guidelines-5-examples-100-prize/

• Do all partners in the service experience (volunteers, organizers, local communities, financial stakeholders) have access to information regarding financial commitments and disbursements that support the partnership?
• Do all partners have opportunities to openly and critically discuss financial commitments?

• Unsustainable, unethical distribution of medicine and healthcare in the mobile clinic setting can have long lasting negative impacts on communities. (Roberts, 2006)
• Short-term mobile clinic trips run by nonprofits or organizations not affiliated with the government fail to invest in pre-existing local healthcare systems. (Holland & Holland, 2015)
• Medical voluntourism brings local doctors out of local hospitals to provide shadowing hours to foreign volunteers, when local medical students could benefit more from that physician’s time. (Holland & Holland, 2015)
• Only 36.3% of matriculating medical students had medical mission trips on their resumes in 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (2012).
• If you were a patient at the clinic you are volunteering in, would you be comfortable?

• Are volunteers given the opportunity to observe trained and licensed professionals rather than providing unlicensed or untrained services? (AAMC, 2011)
• Does the trip keep the welfare of the patient/client as the priority over the experience of the volunteer? (AAMC, 2011)
• Does the trip provide appropriate training for volunteers’ supportive efforts (such as training volunteers to provide preventative health education)? (AAMC, 2011)
• Does the trip consider the challenges of language and cultural barriers to providing effective service? (McCall, 2014)

• Children can become attached to volunteers quickly, especially when they’ve already experienced separation from their family. Having multiple experiences with volunteers who stay for a short time and then leave harms a child’s ability to trust or invest in relationships (Orphanage Volunteering).
• Research has shown that unneeded orphanages are created in popular tourist locations in order to generate profits from volunteers (Orphanage Volunteering).
• Research has also shown that around 80% of children in orphanages have at least one living parent (Csaky, 2009). Parents may give their children to an “orphanage” because they’re told it’s the best way for the child to access education, food, and healthcare (Ministry of Social Affairs). However, being in an orphanage seriously adversely affects a child’s health, development, and future, and greatly increases their likelihood of experiencing abuse (How volunteering abroad).
• Volunteering for the purposes of helping children is most effective and avoids harm when the service is focused on supporting families and communities rather than serving specifically in orphanages. 
(Orphanage Volunteering).