Serving as an international volunteer in a foreign country seems to be a new trend among university students in China. Among the many destinations, Nepal is one of the best choices for Chinese students who are willing to offer help given its proximity to China and the increasing number of non-governmental organizations working there in need of volunteers. But the question is: Is our goodwill really helping local people? To put it another way, what kind of role the international volunteers have been playing in voluntary work? It is what we had asked ourselves before we left for Nepal, as well as what we now want to discuss based on our own voluntary experience in an orphanage in Nepal.

 

How the “orphanage” operates?

 

From January 19th to February 4th of 2013, we joined a volunteer program at Josef Orphanage in Katmandu, which was organized by an NGO called INFO-NEPAL. The orphanage is a private institution established in 1996, accommodating 14 children aging from 3 to 15 years old, among whom three are girls and eleven are boys.

 

When my fellow volunteer and I got off the airplane after a long and tiring journey, we were both shocked by the view of a lonely three-story building in the terrace fields with the Himalayas as the background. In fact, hardly anything was what we had imagined before. Without walls and gate typical in Chinese orphanages, our first impression of this Nepalese orphanage was the smell of soil and the dazzle of sunlight. No children were laughing or crying. What we only heard was dogs barking on the roof of the house across the street. It was as if we had entered an unexpected world by accident.

 

After a moment, a middle-aged man, who was wearing a big smile, walked to us and introduced himself to us as Uncle Ram. He is the founder and manager of the orphanage. At the same time, he’s also a businessman, but spends all his money from business on the orphanage. A little boy, called Sudip, stood beside him and looked up at us with a pair of big shy eyes. Sudip lost his father at 12, and was hated and even beaten by his stepfather. With one ear almost deaf and a broken leg, he was sent here by his mother. Actually, there were many other children like Sudip, who had one parent but was sent to the orphanage because of poverty or abuse. “As they are not typical orphans, the situation of these kids used to attract little attention, but some of them, like Sudip, have almost no difference from orphans,” Uncle Ram explained to us. Though sent to the orphanage, the children still keep in touch with their parents, who may take their children home for vacation. In this way, Josef is also a child-caring center.

 

We then went up to the roof, where we met another foreign volunteer Anna from Switzerland, who had been here twice and had stayed here for three months; and an old lady named Mama, who came to the orphanage and worked voluntarily after her husband died. Another worker in the orphanage is Roma, a 14-year-old girl with a mentally-challenged mother.

 

 

The problems we found about the program

 

There are actually few things for volunteers to do in the orphanage. Every day, Mama and Roma deftly cook meals and do the laundry, while all children here are clear about their housework duties. What we foreign volunteers can really do is a little housework and some assistance to the kids with their homework. We expressed our complaints to Uncle Ram, but he didn’t seem to care. He told us frankly that the subsidy brought by the coming volunteers was the biggest help we contributed.

 

So here comes the question: how much money can the orphanage actually get from the volunteer program?

 

Uncle Ram told us that the coming of volunteers to his orphanage was merely accidental, because some employees in the NGO knew him and his orphanage. As a result, the money Uncle Ram could get was based on his personal relationship with two NGO employees rather than an official and reliable cooperation between the orphanage and the NGO.

 

To our surprise, Uncle Ram didn’t know exactly how much the program fee was, and we learned from Uncle Ram that the NGO paid him far less than the money we volunteers paid to NGO. To know more about this, we interviewed Anna. According to her, the first time she paid 897 euros, which approximates 103,155 rupiah, to a German program besides the flight cost. Compared to what the orphanage got from the NGO, which was about 5,000 to 6,000 rupiah, only a percentage of 4.8%~5.8% of the program fee finally benefits the orphanage. Knowing this, Anna was all by herself without any agency the second time she came to help.

 

Here, we would like to take our program as an example to estimate the income and outlay of the NGO, which will present a clearer picture about where the volunteers’ money goes.

 

Besides the cost of airplane to and from Nepal, we each paid 250 euros for a two-week program in the orphanage to INFO-NEPAL. Therefore, what the NGO received in all was 500 euros, which is about 57,500 rupiah. The table below shows the expense of the NGO during our time in Nepal based on the maximum consumption level:

 

Purpose	Amount  (in Rs.)	Percentage of the program fee (%)
Paying to the orphanage	8,400	14.6%
Picking us up from the airport to the hotel (and the way back)	500~600	1%
One night in the hotel	6,720	11.6%
Sightseeing in a temple	4,00	0.7%
The total outlay of the NGO	16,120	28%
The net income of the NGO	41,380	72%

From this table, it’s obvious to see that the work the NGO during the program did included picking us up from airport to the hotel, sending us back to the airport, arranging one night’s accommodation for us in a hotel (food not included), and a sightseeing we didn’t go in fact because of the limited time. Adding these costs to the money they paid to Uncle Ram (8,400 Rs.), the outlay of the NGO still accounts for 28% of the total program fee. Even if we take payments to employees’ and other accidental expenses into account, there is still a lot more money going to INFO-NEPAL than that going to Josef orphanage.

 

We felt sorry for the fact that we could do so little for the orphanage. “But you two and Anna are the most responsible volunteers up till now!” said uncle Ram when we apologized to him. Despite his comforting words, we found here the second problem of the voluntary program: NGOs usually don’t guarantee the quality of their volunteers’ work, nor their personal behavior.

 

We were so surprised to know that most volunteers sent to the orphanage, approximately 5 out of 8, were not at all satisfying to uncle Ram because they rarely stayed in the orphanage. What’s worse, some of them smoked cannabis in their room. Uncle Ram also told us that most volunteers stayed for only 10 days to half a month, limited to the program period and the visa requirement. Taking their sightseeing plans in account, their actual service time spent in the orphanage was hardly enough to offer any substantial help.

 

With shame in our hearts, we expressed to Uncle Ram our eagerness to make more contributions as volunteers, and he recommended that we help the children with their English and open their minds. However, the answer made both of us fall into silence, because we were all clear that it was impossible for a short-term volunteer work to influence children in a long-term way.

 

Looking back on all the problems we encountered in our voluntary work, we believed that the lack of free flow of information is the main cause. Little had the international NGOs told us and little had we cared about the use of the money we paid to them. Consequently, we didn’t know how to choose an appropriate program and offer our help wherever the money is needed instead of spending our money and time doing little benefit to the orphanage.

 

In order to help other volunteers know the real conditions waiting for them, we believe it is necessary to share our experience. Otherwise, our volunteer service in other countries is likely to be nothing but a personal experience.

 

Advice to prospective volunteers

 

It is a long way to go before we can see the problem of balanced information settled, and there isn’t enough space for us to discuss in this short passage. Here, we are trying to give some advice for prospective volunteers based on our experiences.

 

First and foremost, be careful with the program you choose. Usually, NGOs would bring volunteers to big orphanages instead of small ones which have far fewer volunteers than are needed. In our program, for example, it is only after we directly expressed our willingness to serve in a small orphanage that we had the chance to know exactly what the real situation was. Thus, try to get as much information as possible, and apply for a program which fits your desire.

 

Second, if you want to provide financial aids, contact the orphanage directly. Don’t trust your NGOs too much. Clothes, toys, pens and books are all welcomed by the orphanage. When we were working in Josef, the children did not have enough clothes to keep them warm, and they often told us they were cold in night.

 

It is also worth mentioning that the lack of water resource is a serious problem in Nepal. There is no rain in dry seasons, and there are only two ways people can get water. One is through a manual pump linked to a nearby pool. For three times a week and two to three hours each time, water comes through the pump, but the exact time of water coming is not fixed and largely influenced by the frequent interruption of power supply. The other water source is a small stream about 30 centimeters wide behind the orphanage, but the water is not for drinking and there is visible suspended matter in the water because the women washed clothes in this stream. When the pump doesn’t work, children can only fetch some water from the stream, filter the water by gauze and use it to wash dishes and clothes. Therefore, if there are volunteers with professional knowledge to improve their impounding scheme or filtering methods or the way, the contributions to the orphanage would definitely be lasting and effective.

 

We still remember the children standing in sunlight, wearing a big smile, and waving hands turgidly to say goodbye to us. When we left, the smell of the soil mixed with sunlight seemed even stronger. Lying on the roof, the dog we saw when we first came stared at us silently. It seemed that we were back to the first day. However, we couldn’t be as relaxed as on the first day. We came here with an urging desire to help them; yet when we left, we were more confused about what we had actually brought to the children.

 

In addition, the purpose of writing all above is not to criticize NGOs generally or the whole international voluntary system, but to provide an enduring momentum for the other enthusiastic volunteers to share the real situation. I believe that only by understanding the reality and offering the needed help can we volunteers do better in our programs.

 

Below is the contact information of Josef orphanage. If you are willing to give your hand to them, direct contact with the orphanage is highly recommended.

 

By Zhan Yun and Tang Jiali

Updated:April 14th, 2014