MS. REBECCA ROBERTSFrom WAMU 88.5, at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your community with the world. I'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo. Coming up this hour, it's a paradox of travel and tourism in the developing world. You fly thousands of miles to some exotic locale in Asia or South America, but you spend almost all your time lounging at the private beach or being shuttled from air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned hotel rooms.

MS. REBECCA ROBERTSThe traditional tourism industry often makes it difficult, if not impossible, to get a real sense of how people live outside the hotel walls. But, today, adventurous travelers have an alternative -- volunteer tourism, travel product -- projects with a social conscience. Thousands of Americans are taking off a few weeks and volunteering to help build schools in Cambodia or visiting with AIDS orphans in South Africa or staying closer and taking an alternative spring break to help rebuild New Orleans.

MS. REBECCA ROBERTSIt's a growing sector within the global tourism industry. But so-called voluntourism projects also raise their own red flags. Here to discuss it is Kristin Lamoureux. She's the director of the International Institute of Tourism Studies at the George Washington University. She's also a faculty member of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management. Welcome to the program.

DR. KRISTIN LAMOUREUXThank you very much, Rebecca.

ROBERTSAnd joining us by phone from Cambodia is Daniela Papi. She is the founder and executive director of PEPY, and that's an educational nonprofit working in more than 10 schools in Cambodia. Welcome to you. Thanks for joining us.

MS. DANIELA PAPIThank you.

ROBERTSSo, Dr. Kristin Lamoureux, let's start with you. On a certain level, the idea of traveling to do volunteer work is very old, I mean, certainly, as old as missionary work, right? What is this new idea of volunteer tourism?

LAMOUREUXRight. So, clearly, we've seen in the '60s the growth of the Peace Corps and other longer term volunteer activities that have kind of come up in the last 50 years. What's new is this notion of short-term vacations where you're taking a one to two-week vacation and incorporating -- or even longer, or a month -- and incorporating some aspect of volunteer -- volunteerism into your vacation. There's a spectrum.

LAMOUREUXYou can do a little bit of volunteering and a lot of tourism or a little bit of tourism and a lot of volunteer -- volunteering. And so that's what we're kind of seeing emerge lately.

ROBERTSAnd give us a -- I know there's a range, but give us a sense of what a typical trip might entail. How would you go?

LAMOUREUXIt's really so varied. It depends on your age and what you want to do and then what type of activities you're doing and how much you want to spend. These trips are not free, even though they involve volunteering. So you might have someone working in an orphanage in South Africa, or you might have someone going and teaching in schools or doing trail maintenance in a national park here in the States.

LAMOUREUXAnd there's an array of activities, really -- Habitat for Humanity, of course, has been doing this for a long time -- so just a lot of activities that one can partake in.

ROBERTSAnd, generally, are they organized by groups like Habitat for Humanity or organized by tour companies?

LAMOUREUXSo this is one of the things we're starting to see. There's the organizations, that are nonprofit organizations, that do the social or environmental good, and they're starting to incorporate volunteer tourism, for different reasons, into what they offer. But then you have your for-profit tour operators and other travel providers that are deciding or being asked to incorporate volunteer or some kind of social activity into their for-product package. And one isn't necessarily worse than the other.

LAMOUREUXThen what you have sometimes is the combination of the tour operator and the nonprofit working together. And sometimes -- and Daniela can talk to you a little bit about her experience. But sometimes you have a nonprofit that is actually -- they actually develop a for-profit arm as part their function.

ROBERTSWell, Daniela, you are joining us from Cambodia where you run a nonprofit. It's sort of an intersection. You run tours, and that helps fund your more NGO-ish work. Can you describe PEPY for us?

PAPISure. Just like Kristin said, we have two parts. We have the education nonprofit organization, which is kind of the main reason that we're here in Cambodia. We partner with government schools and work in about 10 government schools right now. And we also do non-formal education in about 15 communities with leadership. And then we fund that in part through our educational travel arm.

PAPIPeople pay to come on our trip, but they also have a fundraising or donation minimum, which goes directly back into our nonprofit work. So that...

ROBERTSAnd what are -- what do the trips entail?

PAPIOriginally, when we started this work in 2005, it was voluntourism. It was -- comes in more than a week. We're selling what people were demanding, which is an opportunity to give back. And those trips, at the beginning, started as come and teach and paint. Then over the last few years, it has evolved much more into come and learn. So we have to learn before we can help. That's kind of our main theme.

PAPIAnd come, learn, get angry, get interested and learn about development work, learn what's working, what's not working. And our goal is to inspire people to improve the way they give, travel and live through and after our tour.

ROBERTSAnd did that come about because the model of come save the world in 10 days wasn't working?

PAPII think because the model of come save the world in 10 days that we were able to provide was not working. I think there are ways to do it that don't involve visiting kids, that don't involve kind of short-term interactions in what should be long-term solutions. And I also think it was fostering moral imperialism, this idea that just because we were Westerner, we could come in and help somebody that we knew nothing about. And, really, what it should be designed to be is come learn.

PAPII mean, the person giving their service -- in the service learning, it's a person from that local community who's serving you by offering you an experience to learn about their culture. So, you know, either we need to start to look at it as that way of service or as a mutual exchange and where we have this opportunity to share cultures, have an experience and learn about a different place in a much more interactive and interesting way than just being a buyer and a seller or, you know, a tourist and a tour guide, a way to come work together, have some shared ideals.

PAPIBut then see the world the other 355 days a year when you go home, and you have the opportunity to actually invest time in learning much more about how you want to invest your long-term efforts.

ROBERTSWell, let's turn this out to our audience. If you've figured out a way to have, you know, an authentic cultural experience when you travel abroad, what did that look like? How did that work for you? Or if you have the good intentions of wanting to make a difference when you travel, what sort of things would you be looking for? You can join us by phone, 800-433-8850. You can send us email, kojo@wamu.org.

ROBERTSYou can also get in touch with us through our Facebook page or by sending us a tweet to @kojoshow. Have you found, Daniela, that people who do want to come and get involved, you have to sort of back them down and say, you're not ready? And is that hard for you to turn away paying customers?

PAPINowadays, I'm used to doing it. So I think there is -- there are certain guidelines that we really set and speak to. And people will write us often and say they want to visit an orphanage. And we used to do orphanage tours at the beginning. But, you know, it's not a zoo. And we're creating in Cambodia, and I'm sure in many other places in the world, we're creating this false economy around orphanage visits. And it's creating fake orphanages.

PAPIAnywhere that you have an opportunity to make a quick buck, you know that there's going to be some profiteering person that comes in and does that. And people are smart enough now to know tourists want to give money to orphans. So UNICEF had done research here and found that 79 percent of orphanages -- orphans in orphanages in Cambodia have at least one parent, if not both.

PAPIAnd so we just don't believe that we should be filling that system, so we will just let people know, sorry, we do not do this. And we'll send them some videos and send some information, so they know. And most people will quickly change their mindset about that, and some people, you know, that's what they're really looking for. And so they'll look somewhere else then. That's okay with us.

ROBERTSAnd, Kristin Lamoureux, Daniela Papi sounds pretty frank about some of the contradictions here. And some of them, I feel, you have to weigh through in order to negotiate people's good intentions with the reality of the culture you are going to. Is her frankness unusual?

LAMOUREUXWell, yeah, and Daniela is a great ambassador for kind of having started one way, learned from -- I think Daniela would be the first one to admit, learning from mistakes and making changes as she said. At the end of the day, the challenge is that it is often a business. And so it is hard for some organizations to turn away, even well-intentioned organization, to turn away paying customers.

LAMOUREUXHowever, there are plenty of good organizations. There are plenty of bad organizations, but there are plenty of good organizations that, you know, have a relationship with the community, have an ongoing presence with the local organizations or community that are doing it, are vetting their partners, are doing it the right way. And I think an important piece of volunteer tourism when we talk about this is, who are the volunteers.

LAMOUREUXWe have -- what Daniela was referring to is the unskilled volunteer. And they go in and they don't necessary have the skill that's needed. If you're not a teacher, then why do you think you can teach in Cambodia? Why do you think you're more skilled than a local Cambodian teacher or any other country in the world?

LAMOUREUXSo that's a particularly -- that's an area that's a particular challenge, you know, if you're non-skilled person going in and kind of forcing your knowledge on people. But there is a whole other area of skilled workers. You know, IBM, HP, they're all sending their tech people and their various skilled employees out to do volunteer tourism around an area where they actually are an expert.

LAMOUREUXDoctors Without Borders has been doing this for a long time. So you need -- when you're thinking about this, you need to think, is there a skill, a special skill that I have that I can bring to a destination that they might not necessarily have? And Daniela is completely right. To just go in and assume because you are Western you have more knowledge on any given topic is wrong.

ROBERTSWell, even domestically, I think it was about a show post-Katrina that I first heard the term SUV, spontaneous untrained volunteers, that are such a time waster because the...

LAMOUREUXResources…

ROBERTS...person there has to come up with something for them to do and maybe insure that they had a, you know, pat-themselves-on-the-back experience at the same time.

LAMOUREUXI remember shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, I got a call from a group that wanted to charter a flight and just all show up in Haiti to help. And they're asking me for advice, and the advice was, don't go. You know, where are you going to stay? You're going to put so many resources, so much pressure on the local people that will accommodate you, but it'll really take away from the critical mission.

ROBERTSLet's take some calls. This is William in Washington, D.C. William, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

WILLIAMHi. I'm on the air?

ROBERTSYou are. Welcome to the program.

WILLIAMThanks very much. I'm calling because I went on a service trip with my church to New Orleans. And just to echo, I guess, some things that you've been saying, it is my own experience that I was frustrated with the tone at times where people were -- I feel -- I felt, like, in some cases, fairly self-congratulatory about how well they were spending their resources to help and how much they were connecting with the locals, whereas, in fact, I think that because we were so untrained, we ended up spending twice as much as -- well, if we hired people to do the job that we had done, I think we could have ended up accomplishing at least twice as much in terms of building houses.

WILLIAMBut I ended up finding it helpful to think about it in terms of a sort of a pilgrimage to the idea of helping people. And that, I think, is worthwhile for individuals to do. But, again, it's not maybe as altruistic as someone would be inclined to think.

ROBERTSWell, Daniela Papi, that's what you're talking about, where your educational trips are to learn about how to help, not necessarily getting your hands dirty in a job that you're not trained to do.

PAPIDefinitely. And I think if you, you know, a lot -- we get emails all the time saying, (unintelligible) the kids. They want to accomplish something. They want to feel a sense of accomplishment. They want to see a project completed, and we've got $27 (unintelligible), you know, these kind of things.

PAPII think one question I always ask, or one thing I always ask people to keep in mind, is you will leave, right? That's the same advice you're going to give to a volunteer coming for a week or three months or a nonprofit that's starting for a few years. And the goal should be, once you leave, how can the people on the system that are left be better able to continue to solve those problems on their own in the future?

PAPISo rather than go teach English for a day, why don't we -- if there's already teachers who teach English, why don't we work with teachers and support them 'cause then they'll be better able to do their job in the future. It might not be a (word?), but they'll get to play with kids. Same thing going on a church mission and going to build a house or going -- you know, going to build a school or something like that. What's framing it is we're going to learn, we're going to support this.

PAPIWe're going to support this organization once we get back. We're going to really be able to fundraise them, and then we can really (word?) in the truth of what it is, is we're coming here to meet these people and take their time, and they're going to serve us by, you know, teaching us about their plight and their situation and their organization and their efforts. And then we're going to, you know, pay that effort back once we leave by continuing to support their work.

ROBERTSWell, also, Kristin Lamoureux, as William, the caller, said that hiring people to do the building, not only might have done a better job, but then that would have been some local jobs.

LAMOUREUXRight. And then we can't forget the tourism component. You know, why do destinations encourage tourism, normal tourism, any kind of tourism? It's an economic impact. You know, there's some money being spent, and you can't neglect the value of that. So sometimes when we get into a situation where -- not to pick on church groups, but, particularly church groups, they have to fundraise to send -- to get money to go these. And they kind of promise to their funders, we won't spend any money.

LAMOUREUXWe won't drink one extra soda. We definitely won't have a beer. We're going to spend as little money as possible in the local destination. Well, you know, guess what? They would have helped as much had they had a more -- a larger economic impact by spending, by go to -- eating in local restaurants and staying at local hotels as opposed to the local church basements, so, sometimes, just kind of being aware that money filtering down into the destination is quite helpful.

LAMOUREUXThe other thing -- and Daniela kind of touched up on this -- unskilled labor can be acquired anywhere in any country. And so if you need to paint a wall, chances are it can be done much more efficiently by someone there. And that money that you're raising could be used to maybe fund those labors. Certainly, you don't want to take jobs away from local labors. So you really need to be thinking about, you know, how can my money be invested?

LAMOUREUXThat being said, there's a real value in person to person -- people-to-people interaction, and that's where I think volunteer tourism has a really key role to play. But we need to be thinking about a model that is not going to cost orphanage to, you know, and can -- Daniela gave the stats in Cambodia, but all over the world, orphanages are popping up with children that are not really orphans because it's business. It's big business to tourists. So we need to be thinking about how is our money being funneled into the destination a little bit better.

ROBERTSWe need to take a quick break. When we come back, we will talk more about some of the programs that are doing it right and ways that you can channel your good intentions into a successful experience. Dr. Kristin Lamoureux, director of the International Institute of Tourism Studies at GW University, and Daniela Papi, founder and executive director of PEPY, which is an educational nonprofit in Cambodia. I'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. More after this quick break. Stay tuned.

ROBERTSWelcome back. I'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. We are talking about volunteer tourism with Kristin Lamoureux, director of the International Institute of Tourism Studies at the George Washington University. She's also a faculty member of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management there. And on the phone from Cambodia, Daniela Papi.

ROBERTSShe is the founder and executive director of PEPY, an educational nonprofit working in more than 10 schools in Cambodia. And you can join us, 800-433-8850, or send us email, kojo@wamu.org. And we have a couple of callers willing to join us now. Here's Pam in Washington, D.C. Pam, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

PAMGood morning. I wanted to comment. My son, another William, William (unintelligible) at George Washington. He participated in Alternate Spring Breaks, where he went to New Orleans and he went to Atlanta to help rebuild some homes. And he used some of the skills that he had, and he learned a lot more. He now knows how to paint, but more than that, when he came back, he had his fraternity, TKE, which is one of the GW fraternities.

PAMThey hosted high school students on GW's campus. They helped with the Anacostia clean up. He helped do fundraising for several different groups during the summer. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. Instead of going to Florida, having a lot of fun and all that, he really came back more committed to helping people in need.

ROBERTSPam, thanks for your call. And, Kristin Lamoureux, this Alternative Spring Break is one of the models of volunteer tourism, taking advantage of college students.

LAMOUREUXMm hmm. Yeah, it's one of the more popular models. We're starting to see kind of -- well, if you look at who's traveling, doing this type of tourism, the biggest groups are kind of the college age and a little bit older, and then the baby boomers. And I personally think that, done well, it's a fabulous opportunity for a college student.

LAMOUREUXCollege students today are a first generation of students that are coming up, having had mandatory community service in junior high in high school, so they're doing it. They know it. They understand it. So incorporating it into their vacation opportunity is kind of coming second nature. And so, as the caller said, Pam said, I think it's a really nice opportunity to change some mindsets, and not only gain some skills and, frankly, it's a good resume builder, but also just make the caller a better -- make the person that's volunteering a better, more knowledgeable, more worldly person.

ROBERTSDo you find through research that the Alternative Spring Break model that college age volunteer tourists have different interests than the older baby boomer volunteer tourists?

LAMOUREUXWell, the younger markets in general are looking -- there's not, unfortunately, a lot of statistics out there, but University of California in San Diego did a study a couple of years ago. And they found that the younger travelers are opting for more international, whereas your baby boomer groups are choosing to stay domestic a little bit more when it involves volunteering. But it really -- in the spring break model, you kind of have to go somewhere quick.

LAMOUREUXNew Orleans is a great, you know, New Orleans, Haiti, local destinations can be, you know, you can get to them and back in a day on an airplane, so they're -- that's a good model, local, domestic.

ROBERTSLet's hear from Simeen (sp?) in Washington, D.C. Welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

SIMEENHello?

ROBERTSHello, you are on the air.

SIMEENAll right. I used to have Peace Corps teachers in my junior high school, and I know what it means to have an American volunteer teach you in your country (unintelligible).

ROBERTSAnd where was that?

SIMEENExcuse me?

ROBERTSWhere was that?

SIMEENThat was in Ethiopia.

ROBERTSMm hmm.

SIMEENIn one of the remote places in Ethiopia, that's where I had Peace Corps teachers. It's one of the best experiences. I had Mr. Daniel Littlefield. I had Mr. Stevenson, (sp?) and I had another lady, the nicest person you can ever meet. The story I'm going to tell you is about some volunteering people who got in trouble. I will start with the recent one. Some VOA officials went to Ethiopia about three weeks ago, and they were trying to have the Ethiopian officials stop jamming the Voice of America.

SIMEENAnd the Ethiopian officials gave them a list of Ethiopian personalities that should not be interviewed by the Voice of America, a long list of Ethiopians. And the officials came back to the United States. And the head of the East African section of the Voice of America, put this list and what the officials told them not to talk to some Ethiopians, on the website of the Voice of America.

SIMEENAnd this official, after a week, was suspended from his official position, and this is violating the right to speak of an American official. And I couldn't believe this could happen in the United States. Suspending someone just because someone who wrote on the website of the Voice of America what bothered his conscience. This is unbelievable that this could happen in the United States. And the -- hello?

ROBERTSSimeen, yeah, you're -- do you have a story about volunteer tourism?

SIMEENThis is one. The second one, is some young Americans, who went to teach in my province, Harar, and these young college kids were having the best intentions. But the officials didn't want them to see what the government was doing to the people there, so they put them in jail, have them in jail for a few days and threw them out of Ethiopia. This is what's happening to American volunteers in Ethiopia.

SIMEENAnd, also, people who work for non-government organization, NGOs, have all been thrown out of Ethiopia by the current government. This government has been on the list of Genocide Watch, and Genocide Watch has found enough evidence to pass it to the United Nations for prosecution. These are genocide officials in power in Ethiopia that are doing -- hello?

ROBERTSOkay. Yes, Simeen, thank you very much for you call. I think he's a getting at a couple of issues here. And, Daniela, maybe you can speak to your experience about -- especially if you don't necessarily know much about the place you're going, what sort of issues of corruption, issues of a less than friendly government that you might find or certainly a government that wants to control exactly what you're experience is.

PAPISure. Well, first of all, it's great to hear that you remember your people who volunteered, that you had positive experiences growing up with the people who come into your community. And I think, you know, there's a very big difference to know with someone coming from the Peace Corps who's getting a lot of training when they arrive, and then they're there for a long period of time.

PAPIAnd also, of course, sometimes you run into a place where like, where you don't necessarily have the -- with skills to accomplish whatever task has been assigned to you. But if you have a great person in your place, and it sounds like you did, then they're able to just spend their few years really learning to gain the skills that they need. So that's fabulous.

PAPIBut if you're coming on a shorter term volunteerism trip, sometimes you don't know enough to really to make the best decision sometimes with your time and with your money. And this is definitely what happens with some of these fake orphanages here in Cambodia, where people are really going to be (word?) and have great intentions. But they're actually feeling a corrupt system because they didn't know what questions to ask. And they just, frankly, weren't able to, in a short period of time, see through the smoke.

PAPISo there's a -- there's quite a big difference between a Peace Corps volunteer and then also someone coming for a short period of time who has raised money like probably before, raised funds, oftentimes tax refunds, to go on this trip. And I think that was one of the big reasons why we really changed our work at PEPY. And I've gone on a lot of volunteer trips all around the world, and half the time I've been, you know, raised the funds to fly myself there, you know all through -- before I started PEPY.

PAPIAnd what I realized is I was getting so much out of the experience that it was worth paying for. It was really investing in me as a person. So that was a big change in what we did at PEPY as well.

MS. REBECCA SMITHAnd, Daniela, you said people don't necessarily know the questions to ask. What are the questions to ask?

PAPIHmm. Good point. Well, I think they are similar to the types of questions that you would ask when you give your money as well. So giving our money and giving our time, and then sometimes you will say, well, don't worry, I didn't give my money. Well, you know, just giving our time to the place, it's just as important that we're asking questions 'cause we are helping them fuel their work. So when it comes to children, I would keep a same mindset that we would have for our own kids.

PAPIIf your own kids were in a center, and people were allowed to walk in off the street and hang out with them and take pictures with them and pet them and, you know, watch them dance on a day-to-day basis, if we didn't -- if we don't think that's right for our kids, then it's not right for someone else's kids. So I would just make sure to try and keep our same lens and our same minds that we would for kids in our own countries.

PAPII would definitely question any place that doesn't ask me for a background check, that doesn't ask me for, you know, more information when it comes to interacting with you. And then I -- my main questions are about investing time in people. So I don't think that things are really the solution to any problems. I believe that it's about investing time in people and education. So, for example, there's a lot of trends in building schools, building health centers.

PAPIIn Cambodia, there are so many buildings with some Western person's name on it sitting empty. And some of them actually have someone's name on it 'cause there's some -- a few at the beginning when I flew in and first got here. And then I realized, coming to the streets, there's empty health centers, empty schools. Why do these schools don't teach kids, which is something I realized when I saw that first school that we funded?

PAPIPeople do. So if you're investing in a project with your time or with your money, that's about a thing, that's about a well or it's about a school or it's about painting, you know, some youth centers' fence, I would ask a lot of questions about how they're actually changing attitude and actions and investing in people. Who's maintaining that school?

PAPIWho's going to teach and how are they supporting that to continue? Or else they're going to have a broken well in a year and half, an empty school or, you know, a health center with all the supplies gone.

SMITHKristin Lamoureux, how would you answer that question? What questions should someone ask?

LAMOUREUXYeah, well, I mean, clearly, you know, I completely agree with everything Daniela said. I think you need to step back and ask -- first of all, you need to look at yourself. What do you want to do? What are you comfortable with doing?

SMITHWhy are you taking this trip?

LAMOUREUXYeah, why are you taking this trip? What level of discomfort can you stand? You know, you're going into a place that may not be as developed as what you're used to. Are you going to be okay with that? Are you going to be okay with poverty, with heat, bugs, et cetera? So you have to take a look at yourself and really honestly -- be honest with yourself in what you want to do.

LAMOUREUXAnd then you need to absolutely figure out who you're traveling with and what they do. A good question that we get asked quite a bit is how much money gets left at the local -- with the local organization, with the local nonprofit. And then...

SMITHWe actually have a caller on the line with that question. Yeah.

LAMOUREUXWell, and that's an excellent question to ask. There's no standard answer. Some organizations leave 10 percent in country and use 90 percent for marketing and administration. Others, it's the complete opposite. So it's a question to ask. If an organization isn't willing to share that, you might want to question why, why they're not willing to share that information. You can look at things like charitynavigator.com for organizations that operate in the States to get some of those answers as well, and just their ratings as a charity.

LAMOUREUXBut the bottom line is, you know, certainly there's a lot of volunteers that volunteer and don't get arrested and, you know, don't wind up in jail and do wonderful work. But the bottom line is, particularly as it pertains to social good, it's hard work. It takes a long time. So you stopping in for two weeks is not going to change the world. It's -- it maybe will change you a bit, but it's not going to change the world. And so what is that organization doing those other 50 weeks out of the year in that place that's important?

LAMOUREUXIf an organization doesn't have some kind of ongoing commitment to the local place, then, really, how effective is your two weeks there going to be? So you need to ask the question, do you have staff there? Is there an ongoing relationship? How do you manage working with one community versus another community, one organization versus another organization? Do your staff speak the local language?

LAMOUREUXYou know, how effective are they going to be if they don't even -- they're not even able to communicate? So this is, as Daniela said at the beginning, this is development work, and it's hard work. And you need to find an organization that's doing this well and go with them.

ROBERTSWe are talking about volunteer tourism and how to make it work for you, the traveler, and for the place you are going to and hoping to help. We are going to take a quick break, but we will take more of your calls and emails when we come back. I'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. Stay tuned.

ROBERTSWelcome back. I'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. My guests are Daniela Papi. She's a founder and executive director of PEPY. She joins us on the line from Cambodia where PEPY is an educational non-profit working in more than 10 schools. And Dr. Kristin Lamoureux, she's the director of the International Institute of Tourism Studies at the George Washington University. And we are taking your calls and emails, 800-433-8850, or email us, kojo@wamu.org.

ROBERTSKristin Lamoureux, we have an email from Mary who says, "Help me understand why the word tourism enters into this discussion. When I go to Haiti or Honduras, I'm not a tourist. There is no pleasure involved other than hoping to share my abundance and make someone else's life better."

LAMOUREUXSo that's really good question. So according -- there's a United Nations body -- it's called the United Nations World Tourism Organization -- that governs or monitors all that is tourism around the world. They define tourism -- or one of the many definitions of tourism is travel outside of your normal range for more than a day and less than a year. So, in essence, you are a tourist. And what is tourism?

LAMOUREUXIt's taking your resources, your economic resources, physical resources, whatever it might be, and going to another place, and having -- in this case with the volunteer, you're going for the purposes of volunteering, but you're still bringing tourism as an export. You know, it's the only export where the consumer comes to the product as opposed to the product coming to the consumer.

LAMOUREUXAnd so you're bringing your money or time or whatever your resources are to the place, so it -- but it still is tourism, unless you're a Peace Corps worker or a long-term volunteer, and then it's a bit different. So -- but that's a very good question because it gets into tax implications if you're volunteering. But the word tourism is somewhere around it.

LAMOUREUXIt's seen as less of a altruistic or less of a volunteer activity and more of a pleasure activity, and then is it tax deductible. So that gets into a whole other realm. And I'm not a tax lawyer, but it's a question we get a lot.

ROBERTSLet's take a call from Janet in Washington. Janet, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

JANETYes. Thank you. I just came back from -- not just, but came back from a bicycle trip through Cambodia. And when I went over there, it was primarily just to see all of the great temples that were built. But I came back, really, a changed person. Because being on a bicycle trip, you were going to part of the country that you never -- I couldn't have even imagined in my own mind. And while it was -- I went in there with some trepidation at first.

JANETBy the time I left the country, I was enamored with the people, the culture and the struggles that these people are going to have to endure. We did want to get back to the country that was such a gracious host to us. And, of course, the children, if anyone has ever been over to Cambodia, are just beautiful and very excited to see the tourists coming to their small, little villages. But we had a very -- our cultural guide in Siem Reap, which is where Angkor Wat, was a product of the orphanages.

JANETBoth of his parents were probably killed during the Civil War. And he really cautioned us, going over there, how to do this properly and not to give money but really sort of assess the situation as to what they might need in terms of supplies and that kind of stuff. And we were very grateful for his education and guiding us through the process. And I just want to put that out there for anyone else who's going over there and has the same experience that we did. There are about 12 people on our bicycle trip. Everybody contributed.

JANETAnd then we were able to work directly with the orphanage director, not really engaging the kids and putting them on a sideshow, but understanding what they needed in terms of sustenance, maybe some just medical supplies, school books and then, of course, you know, maybe some things for the kid's enjoyment, such as soccer balls and things like that.

JANETSo I don't know if that's -- was a good experience based on Daniela from Cambodia, but he was very adamant that we stay away from the tourists, the orphanages and go to some place that might really need our help and not give money.

ROBERTSJanet, thank you for your call. Well, Daniela Papi, this is exactly how you ended up starting PEPY. It was a bike trip where you fell in love with the country.

PAPIYes. That's exactly right. In 2005, five friends and I biked for five weeks around Cambodia. And we funded the construction of a school, which at the time we felt was going to be this thing that we left at the end of our ride and could pat us up in the back and go home and made that realization that school don't teach kids, but -- so it's just like your trip on a bike in Cambodia. We fell in love with the place, and I ended up staying. And I've been here six years, so my thoughts have changed on this a lot.

PAPIAnd I definitely think that the main answer to that is tricky. You know, there's a lot of gray area. And people can really have -- I mean, the most profound exchanges and experiences are going to be between two people who get to know each other and care about each other and support each other and learn from each other. So I -- you know, I can't say all orphanage tourism is bad and, you know, and giving things is the equivalent of giving money as a blanket statement without saying that.

PAPIBut sometimes, that's not a bad thing, you know? And it sounds like you had a great -- you had a guide there who helped you. You know, I have to say I've just seen a lot of -- I've fallen in prey actually to a lot of falsification as well myself. There was an orphanage that I support here for about a year and a half. And I live here, so I knew the owner. And I thought that, you know, a friend who said, well, I'm not sure what I think about this. I said, no. I've met him.

PAPIHe's great and, you know, really supporting this place and he's a good person. And, actually, it took me a year and a half to realize that I was actually -- I'm being lied to and that our money wasn't really going exactly to where he said it was going and a lot of other people's money weren't either. So it's very tricky, even if you're here and even if you feel like you are asking the right questions.

PAPIAnd my thoughts are, at this point, is just don't do it when it comes to orphanage tourism, just because we're really fueling a system or even if the orphanage we might be going to is good. There might be a caller on this -- on the phone and who's listening to this radio show right now who said, oh, I want to do that too. And we're actually fueling a system that probably they're going to end up with the ones that are on chief advisers that are finding their way, you know, into the tourist trap.

PAPIYou can -- I just went by a group right now. It's midnight here in Cambodia. And about an hour ago, I went by an orphanage that has their kids dressed up in these cute costumes, pushing them through the streets with these big signs that say they're an orphanage. It's midnight. What good orphanage is allowing their kids to go through the streets at night, you know, and traveling and handing out $10 bills to these, you know, these tour kids. It's really a shame that our good intentions are causing these problems.

ROBERTSAnd we should say, Kristin Lamoureux, that if you want to volunteer and just find the whole issue of figuring out which people are necessarily worthy of your attention is a little bit too much, there are other things that you can do.

LAMOUREUXRight. I mean, clearly, volunteering with orphanages is a touchy subject, and I think everyone agrees with that. I do want to applaud the caller for two things. One is -- actually, I think it sounds like -- I can't speak to whether the orphanage was really good or not. But it sounds like the guide had some knowledge and gave them some direction. And so that's better than nothing. It's -- it begs the argument to go with a group.

LAMOUREUXBut for those -- and also spreading the word. And that's, I think -- if you do have a positive experience, where you've gotten the information and the reality has been laid out to you, I think you should share the information through social media, through call, you know, calls like this, et cetera. But if you just don't want to deal with the whole orphanage thing or you don't necessarily want to interact with children or, you know, endangered populations, you might consider a trip that is volunteering in a national park.

LAMOUREUXThe American Hiking Association -- American Hiking Society has a volunteer vacation program where you go out and camp for two weeks in a national park or national forest here in the U.S. or the Virgin Islands and you do trail maintenance. And you, other than the people you're volunteering with, don't have to really talk to anybody, you know? So if you just want to get away and you want to do some good, there are other options for you.

LAMOUREUXOne of the biggest reasons people volunteer is to -- do volunteer tourism -- is to -- for the camaraderie, to meet new people, to learn something new. And so there are opportunities to do this that don't involve fragile populations like children.

ROBERTSWe have a posting on our website, Daniela, for you, from Devon, who says, "I spent two years working for a similar organization, Cochabamba in Bolivia, called Sustainable Bolivia. I found that our volunteers would, at times, fall into mob mentality. And if there's one bad apple, this person might spoil the mentalities and positive attitudes of fellow volunteers. It's stemmed from a sense of not being able to truly solve a problem or even complete a given project because of cultural differences or lack of infrastructure at the project placement.

ROBERTS"The volunteers would then easily give up, assuming their efforts would be a waste of time and money. This was clearly a dangerous and slippery slope and prevented valuable projects from moving forward. I would like to ask Daniela if she's experienced this in her work. And if so, what strategies has she developed with PEPY to keep volunteers motivated?"

PAPIThank you. In general now, actually, we don't do a lot of hands-on work. It's mostly learning. But we have in the past. And especially a few years ago, we funded the construction of about four schools. And so we're not really in the business of building buildings anymore. But at the time when we were doing that, these were schools that heavily needed buildings and had wooden structures that were collapsing.

PAPIAnd so we'd -- people can help with that. And what we found was that as long as and if we frame the situation as, actually, you might think your service is painting this or carrying these bricks, but your service today might actually be drinking out of this water filter and being the white, wealthy foreigner or, you know, wherever it is that you're coming from, the traveler who comes in and drinks out of this water filter.

PAPIAnd, well, therefore, you know what? It's the wealthy foreigner drinking out of it. It must be clean. Or sitting down with someone and the teacher and saying, wow, I'm proud of you. It's amazing what you do here. And the fact that you come to work every day and it's this hot and it's this hard and you have to travel this far to get here is amazing. And I came here to meet you. Well, that's -- you know, that has value.

PAPIAnd so I think that by framing that and allowing for our travelers to understand that this building is going to get -- you know, we're funding people to build this building. You're not taking away anyone's job. You're making it easier for that -- for the community and you're making it, say, move faster if you're there. But you can add value in a lot of different ways, and it's not just about sort of the labor that you do.

PAPISo giving people a lot of ways to engage and to learn. And then also fostering that afterward, continuing that learning process. Like on our trips, we leave articles. Some people said that -- people never have a chance to discuss different issues around development.

PAPIWe might bring in some speakers, and they might have a chance to visit a nonprofit. So it's about learning. Also it's about learning once they leave and giving people the tools to maybe support that project from growing. If you would start it before we got there, it's going to continue after they leave and they can therefore have a long-term relationship with that community or that organization. And that's really where we can add a lot of value.

ROBERTSLet's hear from Lauren in Gaithersburg. Lauren, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

LAURENHi. Thanks for taking my call.

ROBERTSSure.

LAURENRight after Katrina, I participated for a week through a local church who had partnered with a church in Waveland, Miss. And I quickly recognized the three-legged ladder that we were standing on in that there were a bunch of volunteers that were trying to do or help with the good work. But we were constantly running into problems with local permits. We were clearly not supporting or displacing local workers that were looking for work and opportunities to earn money themselves, yet we were trying to do good work.

LAURENBut also, you know, there was a army of young people, college students, with an organization, hands-on. I was just very impressed that people were willing to take time out of their lives for months on end to assist in a situation like that. I think the reality is government intervention becomes institutionalized and it lacks compassion. And I think the thing that we ultimately provided the local people was a sense of compassion or purpose for helping us help them.

ROBERTSAnd, Lauren, what did you get out of the experience?

LAURENWell, I got a sense that I want to do something else. When the earthquake happened in Haiti, I wanted to be able to participate. I do realize that I've become part of the burden for the local community and part of the support, but I still want to be able to contribute as much as possible, and giving it myself seems like the most realistic thing to do. But having said that, I also know that giving financially is really the best way to do it.

ROBERTSLauren, thanks for your call. Kristin, I fear we might have left our guest with some more questions than answers because we've raised a lot of doubts about a lot of these. Are there resources people can go to to get some resources?

LAMOUREUXThere are. You know, I want to step back and just say, there are -- it's a more complicated type of tourism than just booking a cruise. But there's some tremendous value in doing this, and I don't want to deter anyone from doing this. It's a lot about an authentic experience with people that you don't know and growing yourself and learning about other cultures. I think that the Web -- the Internet is completely full with information about volunteer vacations.

LAMOUREUXI know that on the website, on the Kojo Nnamdi website, they're going to list some resources. There are -- the -- there's a blog, voluntourismgal.org. She does some good write-ups about volunteer tourism. The International Volunteer Program Association, IVPA, is a organization that's been around for a long time. But I think you -- and there's several good -- there's lots, actually, of very good books about the topic of volunteer vacations. What you need to do is do a bit more research than your average trip, but there are a lot of opportunities out there.

ROBERTSThat's Kristin Lamoureux, director of the International Institute of Tourism Studies at George Washington University. We were also joined by Daniela Papi, founder and executive director of PEPY in Cambodia. Thank you both so much.

LAMOUREUXThank you.

ROBERTSI'm Rebecca Roberts, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. Thanks for listening.