Volunteer Tourism or Global Justice? An Autoethnography Examining My Roles as a Leader and Teacher

ABSTRACT

Volunteer tourism has grown immensely in the last decade, and many participants are white students from predominantly Western universities. This autoethnography examines the cognitive dissonance I felt working as a leader within a US-based non-profit organization operating in Cape Town, South Africa. I systematically explore how my Latine and US cultures exacerbated the conflict between my understanding of cultural humility and fear of perpetuating paternalism. By triangulating qualitative and quantitative data from written personal memos, interviews, and survey responses (n = 108), I identify sources of my dissonance and strategies for achieving consonance by adopting a transformational leadership style. This study highlights the importance of cultural humility within volunteer tourism organizations by employing transformational leadership to encourage self-reflection among its permanent staff and temporary volunteers. The work stands to provide a reflexive guide for leaders of volunteer tourism and outlines how to develop strong relationships between volunteers, staff, and community members.

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteer tourism
• transformational leadership
• cultural humility
• cognitive dissonance
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).