There is a difference between travelling for work and travelling for tourism. This difference lies within the desire behind this drive to travel – One is serious business, the other is a fun time. Sometimes, elements of the two are mixed in but at the end of the day, if you’re having a good time, who cares? Unless, you’re “on the other side”.

Articles about orphanages reminded me of the vietnam war or any war for that matter – When you’re soaked enough in one-sided information, you become blind to reality. Sometimes you’re fighting for a solution to a non-existent problem; Sometimes, intervention is a bad deal.

Although many see volunteering as a good deed, and that donations will hopefully help those in dire need, what they don’t realize is that in reality, they’re helping a business. A business modelled off moral support and profits form it. Examples are vast, aside from orphanages, the most simple (and unfortunately popular) form of such schemes is crowdfunding donations.

Just like orphanage businesses, these pages get donations from people in the name of charity, claiming that all of the money collected goes to those affected. The issue is, such webpages takes minutes to setup, requires virtually no backing whatsoever, and are accessible to everyone. How would you know, out of a thousand crowdfundings to help arctic foxes, which one is real and which ones aren’t?

Nothing is wrong with wanting to help. The problem is helping blindly, contributing without validating can be just as damaging. After some major scams, crowdfunding pages have begin improving their validating system, but for foreign governments, it is up to them whether to take action on these supposed institutions. Moral of the story is, anything can be turned for profit. Afterall, money makes the world go around. What we, as citizens of the world should do, is make sure that these money come from clean efforts. An extremely challenging task, but definitely worth trying.