Weltwaerts – only a trip to expand one’s individual horizon?

When we were still in Germany and talked about our plans to do a voluntary service in India, we both got similar responses: “Very nice that you want to help the poor children in India to be able to live a better life” (analogously). Of course, this reaction is comprehensible as 75% of a weltwaerts voluntary service are sponsored by the BMZ – sponsored by governmental funds, which are there to support people who suffer from serious poverty. On the other side weltwaerts describes itself as a “learning program” – however, the ones who learn are the volunteers.

At this point we have to admit that we do not help anybody to overcome serious poverty, but we are not even supposed to do it. We are here to assist the NGO NMCT a little bit, for example by doing documentation work. Furthermore we organise recreational activities for the children in Abhaya. With sessions about “being nice”, “healthy food” and “computer classes” we try to teach them something they can use in their every-day-life and future. During the daily communication we contribute to an improvement of their English Skills and as we are volunteers and not staff members, we have time to just give them love and attention.
At the first glance this might not sound bad, however the question arises why this work has to be done by untrained, German teenagers. We do not get a salary, but for our trip the BMZ has to pay high amounts for flight, visum…

The voluntary service is an extreme enrichment for us. We get to know the work of an NGO, experience how HIV infected people can be supported, how a micro credit can improve the living conditions of a whole family and can see the impact of a network of self-help-groups for women. We start to deal with the consequences of colonial systems and racism, think about sustainability, justice and the importance of education. We reflect more on our own behaviour and questions especially German systems. This means our trip is definitely an expand of our individual horizon and does not really help the people suffering from poverty.

Still, our voluntary service is more than this as such an expansion of one’s horizon has implications. One example for this is our blog, with which we want to spark your interest in India. The blog is supposed to give an insight into a foreign culture and into development cooperation in general. Of course we are restricted to our personal point of view, anyway everything we are writing is free of medial prejudices.

In addition to that we ourselves get interested in global exchange and this can really change something. Surveys show that due to voluntary services the development cooperation gets a lot of new helpers. Moreover, returnees contribute to an equal relationship between countries like India and Germany. This might be done trough personal discussions, spontaneous behaviour or public speeches.

The goal of the weltwaertes program is not to send out “development workers”, who give poor children something to eat and thus support the donors-contractors-principle that causes addictions like in colonial times. But voluntary services shall build a bridge between he global north and south and shall contribute to equal, amicable relationships.

However, it still can be criticised that in the past this bridge could only be built by sending people from the global north to the south and not the other way around. We are very happy to be now able to tell you that our organisation KKS takes part in a reversed program next year. In spring 2016 to Indians will come to Bensheim to make a voluntary service in Germany, which will be very similar to what to what we are doing in India right now. Their trip will be sponsored from the BMZ as well.

At the moment we get the possibility to observe the preparations for this program. Last month we joined Malathi from KKID who was doing a presentation about “South-North” (how the program is called) in a local university. We could tell the students a little bit about our experiences being a volunteer. The staff members from NMCT are also very interested in this program. We are already really excited whom we will welcome in Germany 2016! J