Picturing the Global South: The Power Behind Good Intentions (V2)

Aims of the tool

We want to question and deconstruct what lies behind "good intentions" that volunteers from the Global North have, when they go to the Global South. What does it mean to "help" in a context of colonialism and ongoing economic exploitation? We aim to break racist and colonial stereotypes and hope to motivate organisations to work on global justice and peace rather than reinforcing existing harmful structures.

The aim of this manual is not to focus on the Global South itself, but on the European
organizations' perception of Global South and how it influences the picture of volunteering.

Description of the tool

If formal education doesn’t make young people aware of global injustice and its long history, we as volunteering organisations need to step in.
We see three necessary steps:
1. They have to make global injustice, its history and its implications the primary topic in a mandatory preparation of their volunteers (“global education”).
2. They have to make an intense evaluation with volunteers to give space for reflecting the experiences made in such a sensitive context.
3. They have to speak out about these power imbalances through awareness-raising actions in Europe. And most importantly, organisations have to become aware of their own postcolonial pictures. All of us need in the movement of international voluntary services have to overcome racism and other forms of systematic injustices.