Forum 4

Illich argues that when North American students take “Mission-Vacations” it is offensive to Latin America, that for North American wealthy students it is just the “thing to do”. He believes that when we go to “help” the Latin Americans we are pretentiously imposing ourselves on them.  The point that Illich makes about how to Peace Corps spends around $10,000 dollars on each corps to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock, when really this money could be going towards helping the poor Mexicans receive an education is valid in my eyes. He also relates going to the Ghetto in the U.S and trying to help the poor, they would act terrible towards you either hitting or spitting on you, which would make you aware of the irrelevance among the poor. Also while in Latin America, we would be socializing with people close to us, according to class and language, not the actual people who need help because they can’t speak our language and we can’t speak theirs. He leaves out if we actually do any help there, he only states that we do harm, but his article doesn’t discuss if there are any positives. North Americans need to hear his message, because this is who he was directing it at, and that’s who he would like to hear his message.


 Travelling and joining peace missions, helping people has become more and more popular, but we don’t quite understand the true impact that it has. Even though people travelling overseas to help say that they have a new global perspective and the experience of “culture shock” most students overshadow this with the fact that this will help in getting a job and career development. I, myself have thought about going and building schools or houses in Africa, but after reading further into these trips, I am now not sure if they do more harm or good. Barbara Heron says that “overseas volunteering is increasingly motivated more by the opportunity to learn than by the desire to help others”. I think this is very true, people are going on these trips to gain experience and better themselves not others, not the poor.  The idea of poverty and inequality isn’t the number one priority which I think it should be. In saying that, if I were to travel abroad I would also be looking for the full package, the experience and travel and meeting new people along with helping poverty.