ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the idea of 'helping' gets constituted in practice and how it perceived or received by host communities are important considerations. It summarizes some of these critiques and reflect on their relationship - or significance - to the research findings with Canadian youth and host organization staff. The chapter examines the helping initiative in relation to national identities surrounding perceptions of how and why Canadians should or could ‘help’ and considers some important challenges and critiques to consider. It focuses on mutual learning in learning/volunteer abroad for development (LVA4D) and global competency. Volunteer abroad programmes are often structured around strategies for 'making a difference' or 'having an impact', and employ 'helping' narratives to describe their programmes. The emphasis on the actions of 'helping' or 'having an impact' through volunteering serve to reinforce the sentiment of what the Global North can do for the Global South: a highly unidirectional and inequitable arrangement.
