International Volunteer Tourism Critical Reflections on Good Works in Central America

Designed to promote reflection and better practices among the prospective volunteers and organizers of travel-for-service experiences, International Volunteer Tourism provides a collection of narratives on short-term international volunteering in Central America written by North American organizers, student participants, and Central American partners. The authors explore lessons learned from specific international service interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, with some attention to Costa Rica and Guatemala. The collection provides a nuanced, contextualized, historically evolving portrait of the increasingly popular practice of "voluntourism" with an eye toward pushing that practice toward meaningful social change.

Katherine Borland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and Director of the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University. She has published on the Politics of Culture in Nicaragua and Honduras and has organized numerous short-term service-learning courses to Nicaragua since 2002.
 

Abigail E. Adams is a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University. She has led many study abroad and service learning trips in Central America. She has published previously on U.S. military short-term medical missions in Central America as well as on U.S. evangelical Christian church-building and other short-term missions.

Acknowledgement
1. Introduction; Abigail E. Adams and Katherine Borland
2. A Brief Social History of Humanitarian Engagement; Katherine Borland
3. Priest in the Revolution; Fernando Cardenal, translated by Abigail E. Adams
El Salvador
4. Reciprocity and the Fabric of Solidarity: Central Americans, Refugees, and Delegations in the 1980s; William Westerman
5. Untellable Stories and the Limits of Solidarity in a Sister Community Relationship; Ellen Moodie
6. Who is a Global Citizen: Manifestations of Theory in Practice; Katherine Daly
Nicaragua
7. What We Are About to Do Is Highly Problematic: The Unpaved Road From Service Trips to Educational Delegations; Irene King
8. From Skeptic to Convert, from (short-term) Service to (long-term) Witness: Towards Pedagogies of Witnessing on International Service Trips; Eric Martin Usner
9. The Learning of International Service Learning: Student Reflections Several Years Out; Alycia Buenger, Meghan Hensley, Nicole Klimas, and Liza Marks
Honduras
10. In Search of Sustainable Community Development through Practice: A Sustainable Potable Water Project in Colinas de Suiza, Honduras; David R. Muñoz
11. International Students and Volunteers Amidst Rising Violence: the Challenges from Honduras; Katherine Borland interviews Jeff Boyer
Limiting Structures
12. The Pilgrimage Transformed: How to 'Break the Bracket' of U.S. Volunteer Tourism in Central America; Abigail E. Adams
13. International Service Learning: Fostering International Cooperation/Avoiding International Dominance; Steven G. Jones
15. Conclusion; Katherine Borland and Abigail Adams
Bibliography