Voluntourism

I found this on the New York Times: I think it provides a lot of great resources for voluntourism for those looking to do it.

Personally I have had two experiences one in Ghana and the other in Tanzania. The one in Ghana was a bit laissez faire - the orphanage (which was super corrupt) did not give us any guidance on our daily tasks and we maybe saw our trip coordinator once a day if lucky. (We were also lucky that we slept right next to the orphanage where one volunteer was tasked with getting her own lift each day alone to her volunteer site...)

In Tanzania however everything was super organized, they even made weekend trips and end of volunteer trips available to us which allowed the volunteers a chance to sight see and do some good. There were also language lessons.

Moral of the story is that there are loads of different experiences to be had with voluntourism, it just depends on what you are looking to get out of the experience. Either way I highly recommend it!