The business of feeling good in summer: the rise of voluntourism and medical neocolonialism

With summer comes vacation, and with it, a wave of offers to live a "transformative experience" in some impoverished corner of the planet. "Volunteer in Africa," "Teach English in Cambodia," "Help at an orphanage in Latin America" are some of the slogans promoting short-term solidarity trips, disguised as altruism but driven by a deeply individualistic logic.

This phenomenon has a name: voluntourism , a combination of volunteering and tourism that has generated a multi-million dollar industry at the expense of global inequalities. Although it presents itself as a form of international cooperation, it often responds more to the need to feel good about helping than to a genuine desire for social transformation.

Programs lasting between two and four weeks promise to make the world a better place. But is it possible to change anything in such a short time? What real impact does this type of volunteering have? Behind voluntourism lies a dangerous narrative: that of the " white savior ." Young people, mostly European or North American, arrive in African, Asian, or Latin American countries to teach, build schools, or care for children, without adequate training, knowledge of the local language, or the sociocultural context.

This logic reinforces the image of the South as a place of deprivation, incapable of and in need of external aid, and places the North as the protagonist, guide, and solution. It is a modern form of symbolic domination that strips communities of their voice and their ability to lead their own development.

The hidden cost: negative impacts and damaged relationships

Far from being harmless, voluntourism can be detrimental to communities. On the one hand, it displaces local professionals, because when a foreigner teaches or builds for free, they replace local workers who could perform those jobs, affecting the community economy and employment.

On the other hand, these programs foster dependency. Instead of empowering, they reinforce the idea that solutions always come from outside. Furthermore, they can violate children's rights: many volunteers work in orphanages without training or safeguards, which has led to serious cases of exploitation and broken emotional bonds.

There's also a risk of disrupting long-term processes. Serious cooperation requires time, continuity, and coordination with local authorities. One-off visits often hinder rather than help.

What to do then?

Faced with this reality, various voices in the field of international cooperation are advocating for a profound transformation of the volunteer model. I present four key points:

1. Listen to and collaborate with local stakeholders: Any action must be aligned with the priorities expressed by communities, not imposed from outside.
2. Educate yourself before acting: good intentions aren't enough. You need to understand the contexts, history, and power dynamics that underlie each reality.
3. Questioning our privileges: It is essential to examine where we operate and recognize the structures of global inequality that permeate us.
4. Commit to the long term and sustainability: more than one-off actions, we need ongoing, consistent, and coherent processes that always respect local ownership.

Cooperation isn't about going to save, but about going to accompany. It's about walking alongside others with humility, without taking center stage, without imposing. It's about abandoning the hero's ego and assuming the ethical commitment to building justice, not charity. This summer, before embarking on a quick charity adventure, ask yourself: Am I going to help or to feel better about myself?

Medical neocolonialism: when helping becomes dominating

We also have another phenomenon: doctors or medical students who travel to countries in the Global South for a few weeks to "help." They do clinical internships without knowing the language, culture, or healthcare system of the host country. They treat patients, prescribe treatments, and even perform interventions that they wouldn't do without supervision in their own hospitals.

They do so convinced they're saving lives. But often, unwittingly, they're reproducing the same colonial logic that divided the world between those who know and those who don't, between those who save and those who must be saved.

Medical neocolonialism operates from affection, compassion, and a genuine desire to help. But that desire, when left unchallenged, becomes a subtle form of domination.

It's no coincidence that those who travel as volunteers are almost always from the Global North. Nor is it a coincidence that those who receive this aid are almost always from the South. Why does no one consider going to do unpaid clinical internships in a hospital in Germany or Japan? Why do we think that in an African country "anything goes," even if we don't speak the language, don't understand the epidemiological reality, and don't know the name of the local professional who has been sustaining the system for years?

These practices can displace local professionals who could perform the same work more effectively and consistently. They also disrupt established healthcare processes by acting without coordination with the country's healthcare system. They also create dependence on external solutions that are not sustainable in the long term. To top it all off, they sever ties with patients when, after a few weeks, the volunteer returns home with nothing but a photo.

Medical cooperation cannot be a platform for personal redemption or a springboard for professional development. It's not about "feeling useful," but about truly being useful. That can only be achieved through humility.

Cooperating in health means:

1. Listen first to local professionals, patients, and institutions.
2. Be adequately trained in global health, intercultural medicine, and the ethics of cooperation.
3. Establish lasting bonds and not make fleeting visits, but rather sustained and responsible relationships.
4. Transferring skills: training, strengthening, empowering. Because what's truly transformative isn't operating on 100 patients, but rather training those who will operate on 1,000.
5. Disappear with dignity: the ultimate goal is not to remain, but to become unnecessary.

The real challenge is to stop understanding cooperation as an act of aid and start seeing it as a process of justice. We're not going to "deliver" health, knowledge, or progress. We're going to share struggles, forge alliances, and challenge privileges.

Saying "I'm here to help you" from a position of power perpetuates the colonial wound. Saying "I'm here to learn from you" opens a path of respect and reciprocity.

Medicine, like cooperation, cannot be paternalistic. It must be ethical, critical, and deeply humane. We don't need more white heroes saving the world in two weeks. We need professionals committed to structural change, willing to relinquish the spotlight and walk alongside the people who resist, struggle, and build health every day.