Responsible family volunteering

From good will to hunting

It is a very appealing concept, going to save the baby lions for a week. It’s safe for the children and it is a great way to learn about wildlife conservation. It might be less appealing, however, if you got to see the whole picture. Which is a lot less cuddly. In South Africa, ‘canned hunting’ is an ongoing issue, whereby lion cubs are tamed, with the help of volunteers’ naïve nurturing, bottle feeding, hugging, walking and playing with them, like kittens, so that they can be sold to hunting industries. Or worse, they are already being habituated on a reserve that earns money as a sanctuary, but then transports the grown lions to another part of the land later on, only to become easy, and now tamed targets for tourist hunters. Who pay thousands for their trophy as well as the all important smug, sick selfie. It’s horrific for the cats – and a gross abuse of the volunteer’s time, money and trust.

What can you do?
Always ask the right questions. Our volunteering vacations that work with lions have gone through scrupulous checks that they do exactly what they say on the tin. As opposed to the can. If you spot lots of images of people cuddling or walking with lions, therein lies a big clue. Because lions that are really going to be set free one day are not going to be habituated to this extent. Otherwise they would not survive in the wild. There are some reserves, however, where lions are bred to be released into the wild and everything is hunky dory. Crucially, these projects are not very hands on, as habituated lions without a fear of humans would simply be too dangerous to release.

See our wildlife conservation volunteer guide for more information on this subject.

Orphanages

It is not uncommon for parents to want to bring their families on a vacation which invites them to contribute to the welfare and education of vulnerable children. This is a controversial area, however, and following a campaign that we led in 2013, we removed many trips from our site that involved volunteering in an orphanage – or even visiting one when the children are present. This was for a number of reasons, the main issues being as follows:

Tragically, because tourist numbers are on the up in countries like Cambodia and Thailand, and many of these want to contribute to orphanages, vulnerable children have become a commodity. In Siem Reap, for example, where the local population is under 100,000, there are now over 30 orphanages. The fact is that up to three quarters of these children are not orphans at all, but have been enticed there to make money, their families having been convinced that they will have a better lifestyle by doing so. Research has shown that, despite considerable donations, many orphanages are deliberately kept in horrific conditions, because ‘poverty pays’. The donations are, of course, being pocketed by the owners, not going where they should be. And one final pointer that many visitors don’t often think about, because you would be very hard hearted to resist being affectionate to children in need – even if orphanages are real and doing good work, untrained and short term volunteers can cause more harm than good, causing psychological harm to children who have attachment issues, and who are abandoned by smiling, caring people over and over. This is why it is vital that vulnerable children are only cared for by highly qualified experts, preferably for an extended period. Not people just passing through.