Pet Peeve about "Mission Trips"

[purpleeee]

Yes, voluntourism (the polite name) has the same controversies. I read a magazine article once about someone who went on such a trip and taught English in an orphanage... for a week. I couldn't imagine how it was for those kids having a rotating set of strange tourist teachers (who weren't even trained teachers) every week. What did they learn? The days of the week 52 times? And why English (not that it isn't potentially useful, but it was clearly chosen to be easy for the volunteers rather than for what the school might have actually needed).

[miffy]

My friends mum goes on an aid trip with work to the Northern Territory every year or so. It consists of nurses, doctors and other health professionals going to remote communities and providing healthcare.

John Shrader pisses me off the most out of all the Internet fundie missionaries. The money could be better spent sending some nurses fresh out of uni over with a few crates of vaccines.

[bananacat]

I don't respect missions trips at all, even when it's people like doctors who are deigning to throw some help towards those poor foreign people. In fact, especially when it's like that. Religious-based charity isn't charity; it's paying people to convert. It's manipulative. Plus, nearly all missions programs don't actually help in any meaningful way. They never even attempt to address systemic issues and rarely ask the recipients what they actually want or need. They just toss a few scraps and then expect to get all the back-pats and praise for doing so.

[Meeka]

I'm a big believer in the micro-loan programs. They help people help themselves. The pay back rate for these loans are incredible. Generally, people in bad situations need obstacles removed, not someone to tell them what to do or think.

I also, don't agree with doctors etc going down to help but at the same time have to dump religion on them as we'll. I was thinking of medicine without the religion.

[bananacat]

I went on a mission trip in high school and plan on doing more in the future. We went to Iowa and my group worked on two houses. We girls painted and such, but the boys and men worked on roofs and did things like that. We had fun at night, but during the day we really did work hard. There's also a group of men in our church association who help out doing work at elderly/less fortunate/handicapped people's homes. Some of our youth even mow lawns for free for people who can't. I think the Duggars' and the Schraders' trips are jokes , but not all mission work is. I know of quite a few people who went to a Native American reservation this year to help build a church, houses, and things of that nature.

You should have just sent the money to the community so they could hire local workers. That way they would get houses and also stimulate their economy, plus they could buy more supplies because the money would go toward that instead of your travel expenses. But then you wouldn't get to proselytize or brag about your oh-so-hard work, so of course that would never fly. :roll: Forget about actually helping people; just make teens do busywork that reinforces gender roles and then you all get to feel like you're super special messengers for Jesus.

[Miss M]

I really just don't get the point of going on "mission" trips to another state when 1) unless you live in perfect place, there are people in need around you that you could help all without spending money/gas to travel 2)unless you have some sort of specialized skill there are most likely people in the community where you are traveling that could do what you are doing.

I have been trying to find a place to jump in this discussion, and I think I found it. Back 14 years ago when I was a Christian, I am now an atheist, I was an adult leader for my Milwaukee area Methodist Youth group, during the time I was doing that 3 years, we took the high school group on two "missions". Our missions were through another group called ASP (Appalachian Service Project), and my feelings and thoughts were originally the same, meaning, there is much to do in the Milwaukee area, but sometimes you have to take kids out of their environment for them to really "SEE" and understand poverty and how others live.

We went to West Virginia both years, it was extreme, the poverty, and the whole trip. Nine days had little to do with prayer or God, it was about work, and it was hard work! The young women did as much work as the young men, they went on roofs, dug holes for footers for additions, etc, came out from under houses covered in ticks, worked in brutal heat and humidity for 9 hours a day. Both years we stayed in schools, the first year the school hadn't been open for close to 15 years, toilets and showers were dismal, at best and we all slept on the floor.

Again, there was little about God/Jesus/Christianity, we had morning prayer with breakfast and evening prayer with dinner, but there was no ministering to the people who's houses we were working on.

I don't agree with all "missions", actually I probably don't agree with most of them, but the ones I went on I do agree with.

[formergothardite]

Wouldn't have been better for the Appalachian economy to raise money and pay people who live there to do those things? If the goal is to improve the lives of the volunteers in the long term by making them see the poverty, then yes I would see how that would work. But if the goal is long term economic improvements for the area you are going to, having people from outside the area swoop in and do things for free instead of hiring locals, I would think that would not go far in solving problems in the long term.

[Miss M]

Wouldn't have been better for the Appalachian economy to raise money and pay people who live there to do those things? If the goal is to improve the lives of the volunteers in the long term by making them see the poverty, then yes I would see how that would work. But if the goal is long term economic improvements for the area you are going to, having people from outside the area swoop in and do things for free instead of hiring locals, I would think that would not go far in solving problems in the long term.

ASP continues to work all over Appalachia, and I think probably always will.

Yes, one goal is for city youth to see how lives are lived in extreme poverty, but the other goal is to help the people in the areas they work in, ie. Appalachia. In the two areas I worked in there were few if any jobs for men, especially men who had been disabled in the coal mines, which were both of the families we worked for, the wives worked, one drove 45 miles, one way to work at a dry cleaner, and the other worked at a gas station 20 miles from their home. It is also about education and and I don't know how to say this right, stopping brain drain, all children leave for the most part, they go up north, or to Atlanta or south to Florida, one young girl told me at 13 years old she couldn't wait to leave there and if she had to join the military or find a husband in the military that is what she would do.

There are no jobs, so the poor get poorer, and the children leave as soon as they are able.

The first summer I was down there, the youngest child of the family was sick, high fever, bad cough, etc. I took the husband and the child, the wife couldn't call off work for fear of being fired, to the emergency room, he couldn't fill out the form! It was then I realized that he couldn't read or write more than his own name, I filled out the form at the ER for him. No one would help him, I sort of expected the admitting person to help him, but they wouldn't, so I did it.

[formergothardite]

So instead of creating jobs and paying the locals to do those things that your teens did, you brought in teens that did everything for free? Sure the jobs were short term, but wouldn't it have been better to pay the men(or women) who needed a job to do the things your teens did?

The poor are getting poorer, but swooping in and doing stuff for free instead of hiring locals isn't going to help improve that situation at all. Seems like it would just make it worse.

Short term trips with teens isn't going to help the adult literacy problem either.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Wouldn't have been better for the Appalachian economy to raise money and pay people who live there to do those things? If the goal is to improve the lives of the volunteers in the long term by making them see the poverty, then yes I would see how that would work. But if the goal is long term economic improvements for the area you are going to, having people from outside the area swoop in and do things for free instead of hiring locals, I would think that would not go far in solving problems in the long term.

Quite possibly.

But bringing in people like that, if they're going to do it, they just need to realize that it's about the people being brought IN. If it's about teaching people what poverty is so they'll donate more in future or whatever it is (which may be an end-term laudable goal) it's still about those volunteers, about their education.

If it's approached that way, both with the volunteers AND the local people, so that it's made clear that the local people are "on top" and are the ones doing the favor (and heck -- at some point, perhaps the volunteers should pay for the opportunity in addition to just showing up and doing work, give donations TOO so then sure after they leave, locals can use that for local labor too) then it puts a slightly different spin on things.

...at least according to the piece on the CBC. Which, to be fair, wasn't talking about missions specifically but rather more about college volunteering trips, Alternative Spring Break, that sort of thing.

Often people think "well, I'm doing someone a huge favor by showing up on their doorstep offering to do some specific non-skilled thing and they should be thankful for me" without stopping to think that actually tons of people maybe offer to do that same thing and it's not really what's needed, but maybe they'll be welcomed in as guests if they admit that hey, it's all about me learning about you, I'm the one asking for favors here really.

Completely aside from any talk of volunteering ever, I will say at my work we sometimes get well-meaning management thinking they can reduce our workload by bringing in "student helpers." Supposedly this will relieve us, and at the same time give those students valuable work experience.

Well, the honest truth is, it's MORE WORK for us to come up with things that those students can actually do, and to train them enough to do it, and to monitor them while they do it, etc etc. I do think it's valuable work experience for the students, and sometimes we do find some great future prospects among them. But honestly? They're the ones benefiting. It's a program for them. Which is fine, as long as everyone knows what it's about, and adjusts expectations accordingly.

[Miss M]

So instead of creating jobs and paying the locals to do those things that your teens did, you brought in teens that did everything for free? Sure the jobs were short term, but wouldn't it have been better to pay the men(or women) who needed a job to do the things your teens did?

The poor are getting poorer, but swooping in and doing stuff for free instead of hiring locals isn't going to help improve that situation at all. Seems like it would just make it worse.

Short term trips with teens isn't going to help the adult literacy problem either.

I get what you are saying, I really do get it, and my experience is just with two families, and the community, such as it was, a gas station, a few houses and an old school. Men who were able to work, either worked in the mines or didn't stay, moved, RUNNOFT, so who would they hire to have work done?

I guess I felt better about a family with 5 kids in a three room house and/or a trailer, having a working toilet and a roof that didn't leak. The first year, we replaced all the plumbing under a trailer, I of course had my period during the time I was there, and changed my tampons in the woods and buried them, as did some of the young ladies in my group, until the plumbing was fixed...how did we know to do this, well the older daughter in the family told us that was what they did.

I don't know what the solution is, education, yes, but the educated leave, in droves, so what does that help either??

[JesusFightClub]

I don't respect missions trips at all, even when it's people like doctors who are deigning to throw some help towards those poor foreign people. In fact, especially when it's like that. Religious-based charity isn't charity; it's paying people to convert. It's manipulative. Plus, nearly all missions programs don't actually help in any meaningful way. They never even attempt to address systemic issues and rarely ask the recipients what they actually want or need. They just toss a few scraps and then expect to get all the back-pats and praise for doing so.

Yeah, this really.

An atheist acquaintance of mine is an engineer and she went over to help some poor villages in Africa with their plumbing and fresh water supplies and suchlike. She was helping to train up some other engineers there too. This seems to be useful, as the villages want fresh water and plumbing and she was bringing some cash and expertise to help.

Another example I can think of is my union with some others sponsored Palestinian firefighters to come to Scotland and get training from the firefighters' college here. This happened because comrades from the firefighters' union went on a fact-finding trip and saw that their Palestinian colleagues were struggling with many fires, inadequate equipment and no proper training. It's like a friend helping out a friend - if you had a mate in trouble, you'd try to lend them a hand, right?

The biggest problem with missions trips is that they don't see the people they're working amongst as friends, colleagues, even (dare I say it?) comrades...they're just "the mission field" and ought to be grateful that a (usually white) American is lowering him or herself to mingle with them. The creepiest example of this was in a book I read called "Kisses from Katie" which was so disgusting I couldn't finish it.

[formergothardite]

I get what you are saying, I really do get it, and my experience is just with two families, and the community, such as it was, a gas station, a few houses and an old school. Men who were able to work, either worked in the mines or didn't stay, moved, RUNNOFT, so who would they hire to have work done?

I guess I felt better about a family with 5 kids in a three room house and/or a trailer, having a working toilet and a roof that didn't leak. The first year, we replaced all the plumbing under a trailer, I of course had my period during the time I was there, and changed my tampons in the woods and buried them, as did some of the young ladies in my group, until the plumbing was fixed...how did we know to do this, well the older daughter in the family told us that was what they did.

I don't know what the solution is, education, yes, but the educated leave, in droves, so what does that help either??

So there was no one at all? No teens or adults who could have benefitted from a short term job? No one who lived in the area who was within driving distance. You said people drove for a long time for the little jobs they had, so if you had advertised that there was short term jobs available you would not have found anyone who would have taken you up on this even if they were 40 min to an hour away?

Yes, these families needed help, but was bringing in teens to do it for free in the best interest of the community? Or was it in the best interest of your teens?

I doubt there is any easy solution to the poverty problem in, well, pretty much any poor area where people go for short term "missions". But it just doesn't make sense that bringing in untrained people to work for free so that they can gawk at the poor and feel better when they leave will have any long term positive impact.

[August]

Or the girls who were old enough to have periods or their mother? Wouldn't they have benefitted if you'd hired a plumber and roofer to come and train them in those job skills as they did the job? And who cares where the people you train go afterwards? If they are supporting themselves and their families with skills you helped them get, then that's the goal, isn't it?

[August]

I've done two mission trips to Rosebud and Crow Creek Indian Reservations in South Dakota. It was not only a humanitarian experience but a cultural one too. We would take old Army barracks and turn them into houses. We drywalled, sided the outside, nailed roof tiles, and put in fiberglass (worst part). Also there was at least one person in the group who was a contractor or carpenter and could give us direction. We worked hard but also got a free day where we could sightsee. Most of us went to Rushmore, Badlands, Evans Plunge etc. There was also time for cultural enrichment where in the evening we would have a Native American speaker, be treated to Indian tacos or go to a pow-wow or sweat lodge. And at the end of the evening there were devotionals and bible time. Evangelizing was not required but if a reservation resident stopped you and wanted to learn more, by all means go for it.

Isn't one of the societal problems on indian reservations the lack of employment? How much better would it be to pool the money you spent getting there and set up a foundation to employ locals to do that work?

I'm pretty certain I would have to travel less than a mile to find old or disabled people who need to be driven to the supermarket, or have their house cleaned, or lawn cut or snow shoveled, or just someone to sit and have a game of cards with once a week. Or you could have a charity which subsidses child care for low income mothers in your area.

[jimzmum]

I don't think mission trips are necessary. I do think community helpers are. Our hometown ecumenical group has put together people from many different churches who are interested in reaching out in different ways. Simple home repairs that you can afford the hardware, but can't do the work? Done. Can't afford the hardware? Done. Can't go to the grocery? Done. Landscape overgrown and you can't do that anymore? Done. Amazing what can be done in one's own town.

[littlemommy]

I think youth mission trips to Mexico, etc, are more about keeping the youngsters interested in the church and the religion more than anything. "Church isn't boring,it's fun! And you! What a help you are, saving souls and shit!"

[oddmountain]

Reading this thread pulled me out of lurkdom because it hits very close to home, especially when talking about mission trips to Appalachia. I grew up in very rural, very poor West Virginia and I despise those mission trips. They do much more harm than good by helping to foster what I see as almost a self-esteem issue there. So many people already believe that they are not good enough to do anything, not smart enough to get an education, and just can't take care of themselves. Then the sweet souls who are better, know more, and are willing to take care of them rush in, do a half-assed job, give a truckload of hand-me-downs and leave everyone feeling like our best isn't good enough to please the "good people" of the country so they have to sweep in to take care of us.

My grandmother would routinely turn mission groups away, but it broke her heart when they visited and offered to do work. Why do they not see how offensive this is? My grandmother was proud of her little house in the holler, and then groups of teenagers would descend on her and basically tell her that her road, yard, roof, porch, etc., was ugly and uncared for and because she was obviously too impoverished or old to take care of it herself they would gladly do it.

We had a neighbor who was one of the old, broken-down miners that a previous poster wrote about. He, with financial and labor help from many neighbors, built himself a small, one-room house. It was tidy, tiny, and probably something that 99% of the country would sniff at, but it was his and he was warm, dry, and proud. He was always inviting neighbors in for (instant) coffee because he had a place that was his. Then the missionaries came and reroofed and resided it because they were offended by it and decided it wasn't good enough. They left him ashamed of his home and himself. Good job missionaries!

I now live in another state and one of the local churches sends mission groups and trucks of secondhand crap to the county where I grew up. I am very vocal about my feelings regarding this, but I'm generally written off as not understanding the situation there. There is only one friend whom I think I have "converted," and it was probably a combination of my anti-mission testimony and her husband's, who grew up getting (and despising) Christmas baskets from local churches every year.

[Ralar]

There's a Christian college that offers a degree in "Messianic Judaism," which requires a mission trip to NYC. Yeah, that will go over well.

John Shrader update: He is leaving for Burundi, and G-d has blessed him with a new, free accordion.

Name of the school, please.

[GeoBQn]

Name of the school, please.

talbot.edu/degrees/master-of-divinity/m_div-messianic/

[Ralar]

I'm planning a family trip mission to Israel, during which my daughter will celebrate her bat mitzvah. We anticipate 10-12 family members missionaries joining us on our vacation mission. If anyone would like to donate funds to help defer the costs of our family vaction mission trip, I can provide a link to my PayPal account.

Note: Since we will be surrounded by many Jews much more knowledgeable than us, we will not do any teaching. The main goals of our mission trip will be the bat mitzvah, sightseeing and visiting with our friends and family who live there the locals.

[formergothardite]

Reading this thread pulled me out of lurkdom because it hits very close to home, especially when talking about mission trips to Appalachia. I grew up in very rural, very poor West Virginia and I despise those mission trips. They do much more harm than good by helping to foster what I see as almost a self-esteem issue there. So many people already believe that they are not good enough to do anything, not smart enough to get an education, and just can't take care of themselves. Then the sweet souls who are better, know more, and are willing to take care of them rush in, do a half-assed job, give a truckload of hand-me-downs and leave everyone feeling like our best isn't good enough to please the "good people" of the country so they have to sweep in to take care of us.

My grandmother would routinely turn mission groups away, but it broke her heart when they visited and offered to do work. Why do they not see how offensive this is? My grandmother was proud of her little house in the holler, and then groups of teenagers would descend on her and basically tell her that her road, yard, roof, porch, etc., was ugly and uncared for and because she was obviously too impoverished or old to take care of it herself they would gladly do it.

We had a neighbor who was one of the old, broken-down miners that a previous poster wrote about. He, with financial and labor help from many neighbors, built himself a small, one-room house. It was tidy, tiny, and probably something that 99% of the country would sniff at, but it was his and he was warm, dry, and proud. He was always inviting neighbors in for (instant) coffee because he had a place that was his. Then the missionaries came and reroofed and resided it because they were offended by it and decided it wasn't good enough. They left him ashamed of his home and himself. Good job missionaries!

I now live in another state and one of the local churches sends mission groups and trucks of secondhand crap to the county where I grew up. I am very vocal about my feelings regarding this, but I'm generally written off as not understanding the situation there. There is only one friend whom I think I have "converted," and it was probably a combination of my anti-mission testimony and her husband's, who grew up getting (and despising) Christmas baskets from local churches every year.

I hope Miss M reads this and takes it into consideration before planning anymore trips to go "help" the people of the Appalachians. Last year one of my cousins went on one of these "mission" trips to the Appalachian mountains and I was the big meanie in the family for refusing to donate to her cause. She gathered tons of used clothes and toys to go dump on them, though. She came back to stories and pictures and got invited to three churches to share her story. :roll:

[Shirley MacLaine]

Reading this thread pulled me out of lurkdom because it hits very close to home, especially when talking about mission trips to Appalachia.

I had similar-ish feelings about the girl I went to high school with who ended up going on a mission trip to my neighborhood a few years after I went out of state... we were facebook friends at the time and she wrote up this whole screed about the area they were in and how the people there had no hope or reason to live or whatever and were just ruined by violence. I mean, for one thing, it's a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood (Bushwick, for any NY people reading). Not saying that's a good thing (and I was definitely part of the problem), but it was a bit rich to read about how much they needed prayers to protect them from the violence.

I dunno, I mean... it's just really, really gross.

[jenny_islander]

There's a Christian college that offers a degree in "Messianic Judaism," which requires a mission trip to NYC. Yeah, that will go over well.

John Shrader update: He is leaving for Burundi, and G-d has blessed him with a new, free accordion.

So it just dropped out of the sky, and there is no mortal instrument of the Almighty who ought to be thanked?

Yeah, typical.

ETA: I really think that a lot of these "mission trips" are seen as entertainment even by the supposed "missionaries." When the poor benighted whoevers don't perform as desired, the "missionaries" get very upset. We had a couple of "missionaries" wander into a dive bar on the waterfront--a dive bar that was clearly marked as such--and write a scathing letter to the local paper about our Hellbound, hopeless town when the dive bar proved to be full of drunks and somebody offered the husband sex so she could get more money for coke (or possibly sex for coke, seeing as how well-dressed men generally show up in dive bars hoping to trade their coke for some sex).

[formergothardite]

A horse, a ugly dress and now an accordion. God sure does pick odd thing to give as gifts...