Can Volunteers Achieve the MDGs Without Unintended Damaging Consequences?

Are volunteers achieving the MDGs without also being a conduit of neo-colonial transculturation? As a practitioner I’m not so sure we in volunteer organisations prepare people adequately to avoid them falling into this trap and I’m concerned that the imposition of various structures for funded service providers might mitigate against a better approach.

This paper was presented on December 1st at the “Meeting the Millennium Development Goals: Old Problems, New Challenges” conference, hosted by La Trobe University and ACFID in partnership with AusAID.