Here’s what she said about the hybrid volunteer-safari trip that she took as a student at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut:
Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students, were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual.
And here’s her take on the trips she no longer takes to the Dominican Republic to work at a camp for kids with AIDS that her family helped fund: “I have stopped attending having finally accepted that my presence is not the godsend I was coached by nonprofits, documentaries and service programs to believe it would be.”
Ms. Biddle’s statements kicked up a lot of Internet dust, particularly since she racialized things by titling her post “The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I Stopped Being a Voluntourist.” In an interview this week, she said that pushing buttons is one of her talents.
What I wanted to know, however, was whether her parents agreed with her. Was it a mistake for them to let her go on these trips in the first place? Should parents forget all about these sorts of trips, whether they’re meant to be spirit-enhancing, résumé-buffing or perspective-making?
Well, it turns out that Pippa’s father, Ed Biddle, doesn’t quite see things the same way as his daughter. “I don’t think we’re in agreement at all,” he said. “She can
say that she’s never going to be a voluntourist again, but I would say that having been a voluntourist helped make her who she is today, and she just can’t see that because it’s impossible to
X-ray your own psyche.”
He isn’t the only one who feels that way, for his comments were echoed in the feedback that his daughter received on her post. She doesn’t agree. “I don’t
think a retroactive look at a negative experience with an outcome that is positive should validate the negative experience,” she said.
For the sake of family harmony, let me just clarify that Ms. Biddle adores her parents and practically drips with gratitude for all of the opportunities that they’ve made available to her. She’s the oldest of three, one of whom is still in high school, and she and her father actually seemed to be in heated agreement on the question of whether her parents should allow the youngest child to go on an international trip if she expresses interest.
Mr. Biddle, a banker by day, offered up a four-part test for any parent with a child who wants to do volunteer work in another country. First, who are the leaders? His daughter’s boarding school trip included a board member and the assistant head of school. Second, what is the mission or objective of the trip? “Does it leverage the skills of the participants?” he asked. Ideally it does, though he wasn’t ready to disqualify all trips that don’t.
Part 3 of the Biddle test is a close reading of whether the trip organizers are selling the beauty of the destination as much as the value of the work on the ground. If so, that’s a bad sign. Finally, he thinks parents should find out who else is going to be on the trip. He said that he and his wife would never let their kids go on such a trip with another close friend. “They learn a ton from one another, and preformed cliques can be a real nightmare,” he said.
Pippa would grill her youngest sister with the following questions if she expressed an interest in taking a voluntourist trip: Why are you going? What is your purpose? Can we meet your goals in some other way? What skills are you bringing? “Although the way that I did it was wrong, I don’t think that it can’t be done right,” she said.
I put the following question in true-or-false form to Kevin Salwen, who dealt with similar challenges when he and his family sold their home, bought a smaller one and gave away the money they’d made: Is teen voluntourism always bad? No, said Mr. Salwen, whose book about the family’s adventure in giving, written with his daughter, will really make you think about what your own family stands for.
“Crisis relief is worthwhile,” he said. “You can fill in for vacationing people in an orphanage who need detox. But the question always has to be asked: If this is so necessary, why is it not already being done by people in-country? I don’t think we necessarily like to ask that question, because the answer may be that people are waiting for some paternalistic savior from the West. It’s the way our aid society has grown up over the last couple of centuries.”
Ms. Biddle recently left Barnard College to work for BrightCo, a start-up that helps companies and others tap the expertise of successful, opinionated young adults. As for Miss Porter’s, Siobhan M. Federici, the school’s director of communications, said in an emailed statement that Ms. Biddle is “extraordinary” and well represents the school’s mission of minting graduates who can shape a changing world.
Oh, and it too has been rethinking its trips. “Miss Porter’s School has been having similar discussions since 2010, when we last had students travel to Tanzania, for we are seeking global experiences for students that are authentic, equitable, inclusive and reciprocal,” Ms. Federici said.
Can there truly be such a thing?
Ron Lieber is the Your Money columnist for The New York Times. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Opposite of Spoiled,” about parenting, money, values and raising the kinds of children all parents want to push out into the world, no matter how much money they have (Harper Collins, February, 2015). He hosts regular conversations about these topics on his Facebook page and welcomes comments here or privately, via his website. The Opposite of Spoiled appears on Motherlode on alternating Thursdays.