On Community Service

Now that we are leaving the school, friends and I have been talking about the ways to contribute back to the alma mater, i.e. “class gift” and such. Having received much financial support from the school, I am happy to discuss this, but there is at least one cause I find very difficult to support - I’ve always had issues with the overseas “community service project”.

I have many friends who have organized and participated in these, and have even, sort of, participated in one (a one day home-building in Batam “community service project” not really worth mentioning). My experience led me to think that I won’t participate in such projects for community service, at least definitely not in the way the particular one I went to was organized. I applaud my friends’ courage, determination and commitment to these projects, but really have trouble coming to terms with calling such overseas stints “community service projects” particularly because of the over-publicised manner such initiatives are usually carried out, and the blatant inefficient use of charity money. 

Would you give me $500 if I told you it was going to a fund to pay for the building of schools in a third world country? You might, but I doubt such people are as abundant as those who would pay $500 for an air ticket that will take them to a third world country to personally participate in the building of a school. The reason is obvious – the money is not an altruistic contribution to the well-being of people faraway (whom they probably never really cared about anyway) and their efforts is not plain voluntary goodness. Instead, it is a learning, humbling and self-gratifying experience that they are paying for.

I’m not saying that all community service projects must be altruistic in nature. But for one where altruism is clearly not key – people who have gone for these rave about how it was a humbling experience to see the villagers’ living conditions and know how blessed they are, and the meaningfulness of what they do, how the simple folks showered them with gratitude – why not call it what it really is? It is an “overseas learning experience”, much like “business study missions”, and less of “community service projects”.

More important than the name, why do overseas what you can do at home? Have you exhausted all avenues you could use to help your less fortunate countrymen? Why organize lavish overseas “community service projects” to rural Yunnan and ignore the old lady collecting cardboard boxes and aluminum cans at your local hawker center? What about the kids in Singapore who had to drop out of school to support their families – are their education less important than those living in third world countries?

I concede that such overseas outreach programmes have their merits. After all, we should look beyond our shores when helping. Building a school in a rural area may not be a lot to us, but it could be all that they have. The same amount of money means much more to them than to us. 

Even so, aren’t there better, more efficient ways of managing such outreach projects? Instead of using the charity money to fly 20 undergrads over, house and feed them, while allowing for the higher amount of wastage cause by these inexperienced builders, why not use the money to buy construction materials and hire the locals to build it? Being more suited to the conditions in the area and manual labor, they could build better schools and complete the construction faster – and it pays them! The amount of money used to fly 20 students over instead of just 2 to organize the project may even have allowed more than 1 school to be build. There are plenty of better ways to organize it – say, send an engineer or experienced construction supervisor over to teach them the skills involved in construction, and that would help the villagers in fixing up their houses and may even get them a better job.

Besides, isn’t there a requirement that not more than 30% of charity money be spent on administrative costs for non-profit organizations in Singapore? Do overseas “community service projects” observe such requirements? If the administrative costs of such overseas “community service projects” were spent in Singapore, it could have supplied rice to a block of needy old folks for a year! 

The way I see it, there are plenty of avenues locally for students to participate in community service if they are so keen to do so. Organizing and participating in a lavish overseas “community service project” seems to me to be more like a game for well to do students where they organize a high-profile, sexy and small talk worthy “community service project” to benefit their own learning more so than to benefit the villagers in the rural locations they visit. Of course, the villagers do benefit and I am sure they are sincerely grateful to them. But before these “volunteers” indulge themselves in the warm fuzzy feelings of having helped, they should be aware that the villagers have also paid an opportunity cost in order for the volunteers to benefit from the experience.

Indeed, it can be argued that such projects are well, better than nothing. (At least, better than me sitting in a comfy room making harsh remarks about it.)  Yet it just seems very wrong to me to set out organizing such a project, work hard, complete it successfully and congratulate yourself for doing such good work when if you take a step back, you could have realized how much more you could achieve if you had the welfare of your beneficiaries as top priority.