ABSTRACT
Volunteer tourism or ‘voluntourism’ can be broadly defined as describing ‘tourists who, for various reasons, volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty in some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments or research into aspects of society or environment’. This chapter focuses on young Westerners—often on gap years—working as volunteers in orphanages. A gap year is a period in which a young person delays further education or employment to travel, often between school and university. Despite the claims of altruism or political solidarity however, some researchers have seen the voluntourist experience as more ambiguous. Children may actively try to engender longer term, ongoing relationships with Western volunteers. In Cusco, children expressed a desire to keep in touch with volunteers once they had left and still talked of particular volunteers with affection.
