TEFL tourism

Definition

Volunteer tourism, also known as "voluntourism", is a specific kind of international volunteering. It is a relatively new concept, combining the nonprofit sector and the tourism sector. Essentially, it is a form of international traveling to resource poor settings, with a primary purpose of volunteering and serving the host community. Voluntourism activities are generally temporary attempts to address education, health, environmental and economic issues. Ideally, voluntourism activities are conducted by non-profit organisations for the purpose of societal good, and poses a chance for volunteers to help and benefit others in an unconventional setting with their skills. Those activities are characterised by the age of the participants, and by the length of time they volunteer abroad. Participants are often young adults (ages 15–30), the length of the trip is often categorised as short term (under three months), and the volunteering is regularly packaged with adventure and travel activities. Voluntourism has undergone intense scrutiny over the course of the 2000s, and an increasing number of academic papers question volunteer tourists' motivations and experiences. A term for a similar phenomenon to voluntourism in the area of teaching English as a second or foreign language is "TEFL tourism".