Beata Dolinska

Do No Harm: Western Volunteers and Self-perception Among School Children in Post-war Sierra Leone Beata Dolinska

Volunteering in Third World countries is a modern trend. People from all over the world, and of all ages, are devoting their time helping others to escape poverty. This help, however, is often the source of additional problems, creating more challenges to overcome. This book is meant to tell every person with the desire to make a positive change to ?do no harm?. The purpose of NGOs sending volunteers to remote parts of the world is to improve the lives of people who have less possibilities than we do, living in the western world. However, each volunteer comes with their own idea of the world around them, their own idea of what their role is in helping people living in a completely different culture. Volunteers often disregard the differences between themselves and their new surrounding. Then consciously or unconsciously these westerners are imposing certain behaviours or ways of thinking on the local communities, most often harming people by making them dependent on the western aid and western ideas of ?good? life. This book is meant to show how a group of kids at a small school in Freetown, Sierra Leone is being influenced by those western ideologies.