As I stood in a never-ending visa queue at the Ghanaian High Commission in London, I couldn’t help but notice a young British girl waiting behind me: small, timid-looking, her mother holding her hand and her passport. Bored out of my mind, I struck up a conversation – only to discover that she was about to embark on a trip as a volunteer to help build an orphanage in Ghana.

To me, she is a classic example of a young British gap-year volunteer. Just out of school, she probably knows as much as I do about orphanage-building, i.e. less than nothing. How helpful will she really be? Does she think it’s better than volunteering for similar schemes in the UK? Not to mention the cost; why not just donate a thousand pounds to this orphanage?

These questions are essential, since she is one of approximately 200,000 young people who take a gap year each year (excluding 2011 due to the tuition fee increase) – many of whom will venture into the ‘less developed world’ as volunteers. 

My own trip to Ghana entailed not volunteering, but fun-filled jungle trekking, sleeping in beach huts, attempted azonto dancing, and hanging out with local rastas. Countless times, though, within the first two minutes of conversation the phrase cropped up: “So which project are you volunteering with?” Of foreigners we met, volunteers vastly outnumbered tourists.

Why should this be so common? If many volunteers share a background and upbringing similar to my own (i.e. middle-class undergraduate keen-to-see-the-world backpackers), what makes them pay thousands of pounds to teach in schools, build orphanages, save turtles or nurture street children?

Most likely, the orphanage-building girl genuinely wanted to help someone in Ghana. Volunteerism is both necessary and positive in many projects where money is tight – especially when the volunteer has relevant skills and stays at least a few months. On a local scale, volunteering can result in a win-win outcome: project gets helper, volunteer gets experience. And of course, most Ghanaian schools (or British schools, for that matter) are probably grateful for an extra pair of hands.

But the question is, why abroad? The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that 27% of children in the UK are living in poverty, and according to Save the Children, 1 in 4 are in severe poverty in parts of Manchester and London. Yet the poverty level of Ghana’s population stood at 28.5% in 2006. While comparing such statistics directly is clearly problematic, and Ghana is nowhere near the poorest African state, this does raise serious questions about the motives and ideology behind overseas volunteering.

Talking to friends who have participated in a wide range of programmes across the world, the consensus seems to be that most volunteered for their own personal gain: wanting primarily to travel or to find a different experience, even “something for their CV”. One friend explained, “because you want a holiday, don’t you?”

It seems likely that the orphanage-building girl would fall into this category. The high cost of many volunteer projects suggests that volunteers seek an enhanced and secure tourist experience which allows them to engage directly with local contacts, rather than to directly aid the project.Projects Abroad charges £1495 (excluding flights) for a one-month volunteer stint building an orphanage in Ghana – hardly the most efficient use of money in terms of Ghana’s development.

But how much do such volunteers actually help? Most young people do not have the appropriate skills (such as teaching qualifications) or previous experience for many of the projects they embark on. This isn’t helped by the fact that many gap-year companies offer no pre-travel training and do not expect volunteers to have any experience at all.

Ruby, who volunteered in Mexico last summer, recalls how few volunteers could communicate with those they were teaching – since they didn’t speak Spanish – on top of the fact that many had absolutely no teaching experience and, consequently, no clue.

Many gap year companies send their volunteers to a few select schools and orphanages, leaving similar institutions in the area understaffed. The system works on the presumption that volunteers will always be an asset, when in reality untrained labour and a high turnover of staff (some stays are as short as two weeks) can often severely hinder a project.

Contrast Britain: no-one in their right mind would expect or allow a young girl, completely untrained, to join a building project or to teach a class. It would be significantly better for individual projects to train and hire local, skilled workers rather than untrained international volunteers. My volunteer friends admit this. They acknowledge that the money volunteers spend on such trips could (not to mention the profits of the volunteer industry’s middle men) cover training costs.

Miranda, who taught English in Nepal, estimates that the £1200 she paid for the experience could have instead been used to employ a locally-based, trained English teacher for up to a year. So, it’s not that they don’t want to help, it’s that helping isn’t the main reason people volunteer.

Tragically, I think the assumption that it’s almost normal for so many British middle-class teenagers to volunteer in the developing world seems dangerously similar to the old colonial ‘know-how, show-how’ attitude. We all know the ‘Gap Yah’ YouTube hit, and envisage the cliché gap-yearer trying to combat poverty whilst simultaneously enjoying Full Moon parties: some truth lies behind such ideas.

Individual cases of successful experiences risk becoming lost in a mass of untrained, unskilled European and American volunteers flocking to the developing world. And this can have dangerous implications for development and international relations. A report last year by the think-tank Demos even argued that “there is a risk of such programmes perpetuating negative stereotypes of Western ‘colonialism’ and ‘charity’: a new way for the West to assert its power”.

While there is much to be valued in overseas volunteerism – and many people do contribute positively, as well as gaining personally – there is a cultural problem to be addressed as well. Our dark imperial history, particularly in popular volunteer destinations such as Ghana or India, means that the commonplace acceptance of mass overseas volunteerism should be under far more scrutiny. Perhaps we need to encourage more young people to volunteer locally, and simply travel abroad as tourists.