Teasing the boundaries of ‘volunteer tourism’: local NGOs looking for global workforce

Ongoing scholarly discussions on international volunteer tourism focus primarily on volunteer tourists as subjects and local communities as their near-static objects. This ethnographic study reverses that focus. Five developmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are explored as active agents that see tourists and travellers as a resource and a free workforce in Dharamsala's Tibetan diaspora settlement in India. These NGOs have found a unique way of increasing the volume of volunteer tourism by offering tourists and travellers accessible volunteering opportunities on the spot, particularly as English-language tutors for Tibetan newcomers. Tourists and travellers in Dharamsala are backpacker oriented and usually interested in Tibetan culture, representing a perfect target group for NGOs offering them meaningful encounters with Tibetans. This study aims to broaden the scope of scholarly discussion and conceptualization of volunteer tourism. It provides an example of how volunteer tourism could become an increasingly effective tool for NGOs in the Global South, in an increasingly equitable manner. It also demonstrates how the method found by the Tibetan NGOs contests the current critique of commodification in volunteer tourism. Within volunteer tourism, true empowerment of local communities can only occur when the locals are in control and able to set their own goals.     

Integrating education and training,and their implications in NGOs’ disaster management: the case of Korea

This paper examines the education and training provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in disaster management. The research presented was prompted as a result of serious errors made by both staff and volunteers involved in recent disaster recoveries in South Korea, for example following the sinking of a ferry and the outbreak of MERS. This paper presents important lessons for international NGOs, as well as for national and regional NGOs.     

NGOs in Bangladesh: Activities, resources, and governance

This paper reports results from one of the first large, nationally representative surveys of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a developing country. The NGO sector in Bangladesh is highly organized and relatively homogeneous. Most NGOs utilize a branch and headquarters structure in which branches have limited autonomy from headquarters. At the branch level, most NGOs in the country, whether big or small, focus on credit services, derive more of their income from fees for services than from grants, rely on salaried rather than voluntary staff, keep detailed financial accounts that are externally audited, and hire middle-class college educated men as managers. The convergence to a modal institutional form probably is the result of the persuasive power of ideas, sociological pressures toward acculturation and conformity, as well as material incentives.     

WTO争端解决机制中“法庭之友”的介入

“法庭之友”介入是 WTO 争端解决机制迎合经济全球化发展,满足公民社会参与,提高合法与公正性的一种创新方式。本文分析了“法庭之友”介入WTO 争端解决机制的背景,回顾了“法庭之友”的沿革与发展,在总结 WTO 争端解决的相关实例基础上,分析了“法庭之友”介入 WTO 争端解决机制存在的问题、发展完善的规则及其前景,最后提出我国应对和利用“法庭之友”的建议。