After completing the readings and class discussion, suggest 3 overarching key concepts or guidelines that will be important to ethical service engagement. List the principles and provide a rational as to why you chose each one.
While there is a lot that goes into ensuring that service is being conducted ethically, I think that the most important principle is to make sure that the service is reciprocally beneficial to both the host community and the service-providers or volunteers. It’s easy to see when a volunteer is benefiting from their service. Volunteers get to meet new people, travel and try to new things, all while learning and ideally doing something good for the community they are serving. I think it’s much more difficult to see benefits in a host community because often the effects of hosting volunteers manifest over a longer period of time. A volunteer is positively or negatively affected immediately, while the effects on a community are much less apparent. I think volunteer organizations often focus less on this side of their work than on the volunteer side as we could see in some of the case-studies. Even though it’s harder to see and quantify the effects of volunteer organizations on host-communities, this is perhaps the most important part of conducting ethical service. If the service is not mutually beneficial to both the volunteers and the host community then it’s not ethical.
The second most important thing in conducting ethical service is cooperation between the host community and the service organization. Both groups should work together to plan to determine what the host community wants and what they can take on. Members of the host community need to be actively involved in the entire process to ensure that they’re getting what they want out of the service and that the service is benefitting them.
The third important guideline would be to ensure that volunteers are educated about the place they will be serving. If they are going to be traveling to a foreign country, they need to know about the history and culture of that county. They should also be familiarized with common social practices and customs to make sure that they can be culturally sensitive and also to help them through their own culture shock. They also need to be very familiar with the specific issue they will be working with in country. Additionally, host communities should be educated about the volunteers they will be taking in to reduce cultural miscommunications and help the host community prepare so that they can get the most out of having the volunteers in their communities. Educating and preparing both the volunteers and the host community will make the experience more positive for everyone.