Voluntourism

This posting is long overdue, but that's how it usually is. Last October I went with a group of photojournalism students to New Orleans to work on independent projects. I chose to focus on "voluntourism," a trend that sprung up after Hurricane Katrina in which out-of-towners come to NoLa for the joint goals of volunteering and tourism. I was especially interested in this topic because of my own personal experience with it (my first trip to New Orleans was in the Spring of 2006 with a volunteer group to work for Common Ground Relief) as well as my family's interest in it (my Dad, brother and sister have volunteered through Katrina Corps). Our group's focus on the economic downturn as it relates to New Orleans gave me an opportunity to reflect on the changes in Voluntourism since Katrina in 2005.

What I found and tried to document for the few days we were there was a continuing influx of outsiders, though diminished in numbers as the years have passed, as well as a consistently active internal volunteer structure that has attracted people from across the country to live more permanently in the city and devote their energies to more long-term opportunities like those through AmeriCorps and City Year. If anything, the effect of the economy on voluntourism was in the corporate sector, which had hitherto been active in promoting volunteer opportunities for convention and conference attendees in the city.