In the coming weeks, the newest cohort of Peace Corps volunteers from the US will begin their two-year service in Nepal, after completing nine weeks of ‘intensive language, cross-cultural and technical training’, according to the US embassy. Volunteers will be teaching English in schools, working on food security projects and supporting environmental initiatives.

The volunteers’ arrival resurfaces a difficult but critical question: Can someone from the global north arrive in a country in the global south with the intention of helping and truly do good?

That depends. One cannot ‘do good’ without a deep understanding of the community and its culture. And that requires far more than learning how to navigate daily life within it. Culture is not something absorbed through orientation modules and vocabulary drills. It is accumulated through childhood, history, lived experiences, grief, humour, family structures and politics. Language itself contains worlds of nuance that outsiders simply cannot access so quickly.

This is what philosopher Ivan Illich warned about in his famous 1968 speech, “To hell with good intentions”, which he gave to American volunteers preparing to work in Latin America. “Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help,” he said, advocating throughout his speech for the voluntary withdrawal of all North American volunteers from Latin America. Illich was not suggesting the volunteers were acting out of cruelty or malice; rather, his critique was rooted in the belief that people from first-world countries often underestimate how much power, ideology and cultural assumptions they carry with them wherever they go.

Illich argued that, intentionally or not, volunteers from the US become ambassadors, ‘salesmen’, for an American worldview—a particular understanding of progress, education, success and development. Acts of service can reinforce the idea that solutions flow from the West outward.

I arrived in Nepal in September 2025 with five other American students, who were also beginning their gap years before starting college. We were participating in a three-month-long programme that was not centred on service, but around travel, exploration and brief cultural immersion. Throughout the programme, our instructors made it clear that we had not ‘come to help’ and discussed the ethics of entering another country as outsiders.

Across many volunteer programmes worldwide, turnover is high, and training is inconsistent. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, the average volunteer retention rate is 65 percent, with roughly one out of three volunteers leaving. Children are repeatedly introduced to new volunteers who arrive enthusiastic but inexperienced, only to depart weeks later. Lessons become fragmented. Emotional bonds are formed and broken. Concepts are introduced, then retaught by the next wave of volunteers who arrive for their stint of ‘voluntourism’.

One of my programme instructors, who grew up in an ashram surrounded by international volunteers, remembers this instability from his own childhood. In his essay, We Aren’t Just Vehicles for Your Guilt and Privilege, he recalls volunteers arriving for a few weeks, playing with him, giving him candies and then leaving. Each departure, he writes, left him with ‘a keen sense of loss’.

The Peace Corps sits on the more thoughtful and long-term end of international service. I would not classify it as voluntourism. In many ways, I admire the model: the two-year commitment, the emphasis on language learning, and the effort placed on cultural immersion. Those aspects distinguish it from short-term volunteer experiences.

Many international volunteer trips last only for one to four weeks, which Worldpackers describes as ‘volunteer vacations’. On its website, the travel platform calls this a ‘highly popular option’, ideal for travellers hoping to volunteer during a short-term holiday. But the phrase ‘volunteer vacation’ raises questions about the quality of the work being done and the mindset volunteers bring to these experiences. Worldpackers also limits experiences to three months. In such a short span of time, how much meaningful, lasting impact can someone realistically make?

Voluntourism is only growing. According to Euro News, in 2023, volunteer tourism was worth about €725 million ($842 million) globally. It is projected to grow above six percent annually through 2030. In Europe alone, the market is expanding by nearly five percent each year.

While there is no exact data on the percentage of international volunteers coming from wealthier nations, the 2018 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report indicates that higher-income countries, like the US and the UK, tend to have a much greater concentration of volunteer organisations.

It is also worth noting that many volunteers lack the expertise to contribute. In his essay, Bhandari challenges volunteers with a pointed question, referencing the many programmes where volunteers build homes or schools: Why do you believe you are the right person to come to another country and construct a school when you have never laid a single brick, fixed a window or installed a door in your own life?

It is one thing for an emergency physician or trained rescue worker to arrive from the US after a humanitarian disaster to support relief efforts. It is another for a 22-year-old, fresh out of college, to assume they can do the same.

While I am still trying to figure out where I stand, I believe Illich’s view is overly simplistic. I do not think all international volunteering is harmful, or that people should retreat into their own countries and stop caring about the wider world.

But there are problems embedded in the very language of ‘helping’, because the word implies a power dynamic. It assumes one side has the solutions, expertise and knowledge that the other side lacks. And it reinforces the ‘white-savior’ complex, where wealthy nations position themselves as rescuers. My instructor mentioned a phrase foreign volunteers should remind themselves of: “You don’t know better. You know different.”

There can be value in this difference. Volunteers can contribute skills, perspectives and labour if they are in a place long enough and if they have the necessary experience. But they should arrive, understanding that they are not entering empty spaces waiting to be fixed. Communities already possess knowledge, leadership, resilience and systems of care. The goal should not be to ‘uplift’ communities as though they are passive recipients of wisdom from abroad. It should be to listen carefully, collaborate slowly and recognise the limits of one’s own understanding.

Perhaps Illich was too harsh when he urged foreign volunteers to stay home and confront injustice within their own country instead. But his central warning remains urgent today: Good intentions are not enough. The road to harm is often paved with people who meant well. And as international volunteering continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important to grapple with that reality.