Brief response Article writing paper help
ENGL 203 Spring 2018-Response Assignment 2 1
ENG 203: Response Paper 2 (13 points)
1. Read the article on the next page (2-3).
2. Then write a response paper.
a. Your response paper should be between 300 and 400 words.
b. It has to include your response/reaction to two key points from the original article.
c. It has to have (a) an introduction, and (b) two body paragraphs. A conclusion is recommended,
but is optional.
d. The response should be justified with specific examples and logical analysis.
e. Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, left justified, in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, with
1-inch (2.54 cm) margins. Paragraphs should be indented.
f. You have to type your name, QU ID, course-section (please check Blackboard for correct section
number) teacher’s name, and due date in the left upper corner of your paper:
Mohammad Yousef
12345678
ENG 203 – 109
Caitlin Farinelli
September 30, 2018
g. Your paper is due on OneNote (upload a Word Document with correct formatting to the section
with your name that says “Response Paper”) by 11:59pm on Sunday, September 30th. Late
submissions are subject to the late assignment policy outlined in the syllabus.
h. You have to submit your paper to SafeAssign before submitting to OneNote. Plagiarism is a
serious academic dishonesty and would result in F for the assignment or for the course.
i. If your SafeAssign score is 15% or more, your teacher will check and determine whether the high
score is due to actual plagiarism or due to other reasons such as title of the article.
ENGL 203 Spring 2018-Response Assignment 2 2
This article was adapted from its original version.
Voluntourism
Tina Rosenberg, 2018
Every year, millions of people from wealthy nations travel to poor countries, hoping to do good.
University students want to spend a school break or part of a summer giving back; perhaps even to improve
their CV. All seek personal growth, connection to those less fortunate, and the satisfaction of making a
difference. “Hope of Life” a charity in rural Guatemala has such scouts who work in mountain villages,
looking to save infants The number of orphanages has been growing, according to the UN. The reason is
demand from a huge rise in tourists willing to pay to work in orphanages. This is known as orphanage
tourism or “voluntourism”. The aspiration to help the most vulnerable children is a noble one, but the
booming business of “voluntourism” sustains practices and institutions that actually do harm not good.
Many of these missions and charities establish orphanages for children. Wealthy countries consider
orphanages harmful for their own children, as research has found that the best environment to raise a child is
his own family. They instead, offer services that can help families keep children with them, or seek adoptive
parents or foster families. Nonetheless, they provide a stream of money that makes orphanages viable
businesses abroad. It has been found that parents in poor countries may hand over children to these
orphanages because they are special needs children, or because the family cannot afford to send them to
school. If children go to orphanages because their families are poor, the solution would seem to be working
to reduce poverty rather than building and funding such institutions. Nevertheless, institutions become the
solution because governments do not have – or are not willing to spend – money for anti-poverty work.
Donors from wealthy countries often establish orphanages in response to a crisis. However, after the
crisis is over, donations keep on arriving, so the institution stays open. A London-based group found that
one orphanage in Haiti, established by a US religious organization, after the earthquake in 2010, kept
children malnourished and living a filthy, unstimulating life. Yet it collected donations averaging $10,000
(£7,700) a year per child. Other such institutions were engaged in trafficking and selling children for
adoption to families in wealthy countries. In these poor countries, there is no government budget to
supervise these institutions or watch what they are doing.
Many of these volunteers prefer to work in orphanages, which have special needs children.
However, the special needs kids need more trained care givers, physical therapists and speech therapists.
Right now, they are understaffed and these volunteers are not educated enough to handle the children they
care for. When volunteers turn up at an orphanage and children run to hug them, it is understandable that
they feel they are providing much-needed love and attention. They do not realize that children should not
turn to random strangers for affection.
Voluntourism may be fuelled by noble feelings, but it is built on irrational economics. Many
organizations offer volunteers the chance to dig wells, build schools and do other construction projects in
poor villages. It is easy to understand why it is done this way: if a charity hired locals for its unskilled work,
it would be spending money. If it uses volunteers who pay to be there, it is raising money. However, the last
thing a poor village needs is imported unskilled labor. People there are desperate for jobs. Public works
serve the community better and last longer when locals do them. Besides, long-term change happens when
people can solve their own problems, rather than having things done for them.
Defenders of voluntourism maintain that its real value is to change the visitor. However, while it is
definitely more transformational for the visitor than the host, it is not clear how significant the effects are. A
study of 162 Americans who travelled to Honduras to build houses after a hurricane found that this work had
made no difference. Moreover, the houses built were expensive, costing $30,000 apiece, including airfare,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/guatemala
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/19/the-race-to-rescue-cambodian-children-from-orphanages-exploiting-them-for-profit
ENGL 203 Spring 2018-Response Assignment 2 3
This article was adapted from its original version.
while local organizations could build them for $2,000. If well-wishers had contributed money instead of
labor, 15 times more houses could have been built.
In addition, visits to these orphanages showed that not much money was being spent on its most
vulnerable, disabled residents. Instead, a lot of investment has gone towards making the volunteer
experience as comfortable as possible – and as emotionally rewarding. Donations are spent on the
volunteers’ accommodation, transport and programs rather than on hiring specialists to care for the children
or bringing them much needed equipment.
Sometimes voluntourism becomes a problem. Andrea Freidus, an assistant professor of anthropology
at the University of North Carolina, wrote that voluntourism gets in the way of recognizing the real issues
that create humanitarian crises. It manages to put a cover over the larger systems that produce inequality,
poverty, particular patterns of disease distribution and various forms of violence. This act of volunteerism is
not about justice or welfare of children in poor countries but about having a big emotional experience, that
validates privilege.
Fortunately, this trend is changing. Different countries are now discouraging the practice of
orphanage tourism and labeling it as child trafficking and stopping universities from advertising orphanage
placements to their students. Some religious groups are trying to channel efforts into family and community
care rather than orphanages. A recently published guide for short-term volunteers working with children
advised groups running trips for volunteers to commit to the best interest of each child first, over the
visitors’ emotional or physical needs.
Some who still advocate such volunteerism object to the criticism, saying volunteers are not the
enemy. They are the solution here. This is a huge, committed, passionate, motivated population willing to do
just about anything to care for these children and they should not be discouraged. They would like to see
voluntourism recast as “transformational tourism”, with visitors rewarded by gaining a better understanding
of these people’s lives.
