By Michelle Oliel of Stahili and Sophie Otiende of HAART. One of Kenya’s leading newspapers, the Daily Nation, recently reported a story of a Dutch national with previous convictions for sex offences who has been charged with sexually abusing and assaulting young girls in a Kenyan orphanage which he had himself established. As outrageous as …
Continue reading “Let’s Call it What it is: Orphanage Trafficking”
2018 was another positive year for our team at Stahili as we continued our work to ensure that children grow up in families, not orphanages. As always, we were inspired every day by careleavers, fellow advocates, friends and supporters around the world. Building on developments in 2017, 2018 was a momentous year of action. …
Continue reading “Stahili’s review of 2018: a year of action for families, not orphanages”
Concern about the harmful effects of orphanage volunteering and “orphanage tourism” has grown around the world in recent years, for example in Australia. Now Wybren van Haga, Spokesperson for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie), a leading Dutch political party, has put forward proposals to curb and eventually end orphanage …
Continue reading “Stahili welcomes the VVD initiative to end orphanage tourism in the Netherlands”
Claire Bennett is one of the co-authors of the new book Learning Service: the Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad with Zahara Heckscher, Joseph Collins, and Daniela Papi-Thornton. Stahili’s Education and Advocacy Director, Rob Oliver, recently spoke to Claire, who is based in Nepal, about the concept of “learning service” and how it offers us new …
Continue reading “From service learning to learning service: an interview with Claire Bennett”
The idea of combining volunteer work with tourism sounds, at first glance, like a “win-win” situation. You travel, you do good. Volunteer + tourism. What could possibly go wrong? In partnership with teachers at the International School of The Hague (ISH), Stahili has piloted a two-week programme, the Voluntourism Project, for year 11 students (aged …
Giulia Mazzu is a third year Law student at King’s College, London, and a summer research fellow at Stahili Foundation. The combination of volunteering and tourism has grown in popularity among teenagers and university students, especially those who can afford to pay to participate in volunteering trips abroad. I attended a private high school, where …
Continue reading “The business of overseas volunteering: a student perspective”