I read an article last week that made me really uncomfortable. Because, dang it, I fall right into the population that the article is calling out.
In her December 2015 article 7 Reasons Why Your Two Week Trip To Haiti Doesn’t Matter: Calling Bull on “Service Trips”, Michelle Lynn Stayton points out that “helping” isn’t synonymous with long-term solutions to the problems that local populaces are facing. And that wanting to help isn’t the same as actually helping. And that spending a buttload of money to travel to somewhere new and exciting under the guise of “service” is a load of self-aggrandizing hooey.