Peter Devereux

This field study explores how career considerations intersect with other motives to inform the decision by skilled professionals to accept long-term international development volunteer positions. Analyzing pre-assignment interviews with 50 volunteers, we find strong interdependencies between volunteers’ careers and their altruistic objectives, with large numbers across different career stages seeking to use their volunteer experiences to curate careers that, variously, establish, recalibrate, advance, refresh, or extend their prosocial contributions beyond their volunteer assignment. We identify six volunteer profiles—that we label Launchers, Enhancers, Career Breakers, Transitioners, Imposed Transitioners, and Veterans—which are broadly aligned to career stage, and which present a nuanced perspective of the individual-altruism nexus in international volunteering. We advance modern career theories by showing how international volunteering experiences serve as pathways to bring greater career meaning while simultaneously introducing precarity and liminality that increase the already high opportunity costs of international development volunteering.

The Longitudinal Study of Australian Volunteers (LSAV) is a research project that aims to explicate whether, why and how participating in the Australian Volunteers Program (the program) influences volunteers personally and professionally in relation to four outcome areas: (i) civic participation, engagement and literacy (civic), (ii) global literacy and connections (international), (iii) career progression and professional capabilities (professional), and (iv) personal circumstances and capabilities (personal).

This report outlines findings of the study’s first three years (2019-21), which tracked a cohort of 54 Australian volunteers and “approved accompanying dependents” (AADs) who in 2019 commenced assignments in 16 countries. Scheduled assignment durations ranged from 2-18 months although most were curtailed prematurely by COVID. Data were collected via a series of semi-structured interviews with each participant at three waves: prior to commencing their assignment (T1), at the end of their assignment (T2), and again 12 months after completing their assignment (T3). This report complements earlier reports outlining participants’ preassignment motives and expectations (Phase One, 2019) and in-country experiences (Phase Two, 2020)...

This report summarises results of the first wave of data collected in Phase Two of the research project, Longitudinal Study of Australian Volunteers. The report presents results of interviews with 55 participants at the completion of their international volunteer assignment. It addresses participants’ main in-country experiences, self-reported learning and changes, perceptions of in-country support from the program, and the perceptions of 38 participants who were repatriated in March 2020 as a result of the global escalation of COVID-19 cases.

This chapter explores Curtin University’s sustainability agenda, which is reflected in a number of programs and achievements. However, many pressing global issues, such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Ethics and Governance require a systems understanding and the 2030 Agenda provides an appropriate framework for this. Complex systems, such as a university are made up of multiple, interrelated and interdependent departments. Systems thinking in higher education has much to contribute to sustainability discourses, providing a theoretical foundation and a university wide testing laboratory for interdepartmental discussions and alignment of goals and strategies and their implementation. Curtin University has identified the need for a coherent and sustainable systems approach. This chapter outlines a theoretical model exemplifying how, using a complex systems thinking approach, the numerous projects can be integrated across the key stakeholdersStakeholders and measured against socially responsible and sustainable best practices. In particular, Deming’s systems thinking theory, which is the complex systems thinking approach chosen offers an opportunity to explore dynamic processes and interconnections making use of collaborative relationships and multifaceted inquiry. The chapter highlights the complexity, challenges and benefits of this approach as a demonstration in microcosm, the challenges and opportunities for successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

With the onset of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change, the world's nations were to create economic development integrating environmental and social improvement. However, there is still much uncertainty in the world of politics and academia as to whether these integrated goals are achievable and how they can fit best with diverse national and local contexts. Thus, there is always a need to find nations that can show how it can be achieved in different settings shaped by local experiences, challenges, and opportunities. Bhutan could be one of these nations as it could be argued that it has, to an extent, simplified the task to fit its values and aspirations. Bhutan has three major goals that need to be integrated: Wealth (GDP) to align with their middle-income aspiration, thus providing opportunities for employment, Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG) that are maintained at a carbon neutral level, which is beyond most national commitments, and Bhutan's renowned Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, which covers their socio-economic goals. We show this integration and then synthesize some core findings from a literature review on the theory and practice of sustainable development through the lens of the three integrated goals of Bhutan, thereby placing the case of Bhutan into the wider literature. This paper seeks to show how one emerging nation can model an operational sustainability policy. The paper highlights some plausible synergies between the 17 SDGs and the domains and indicators of GNH that could help nations struggling with how they can create sensible sustainability outcomes from these new global agendas. Bhutan has framed the GNH as its contribution to sustainability. However, this paper suggests that it may be the integration of the GNH with GDP and GHG that is its real contribution. Furthermore, Bhutan's 3G model of fully integrating GNH, GDP, and GHG suggests a way forward for achieving their imperatives of economic growth, whilst enabling the SDGs and achieving the difficult climate change goal. It may also suggest a model for other nations wanting to find a complementary way of framing economic growth, the 17 SDGs, and the Paris Agreement into a coherent set of policies.

How can we prepare for and motivate ongoing improvements in development practice in the world of universal sustainable development goals? International Development Studies courses are a relatively new phenomenon. Earlier, people entered the field with technical backgrounds and learnt on the job. Similarly, many took the road from long-term international volunteering or Junior Expert/Junior Professional Officer posts, and moved into a career in international development [Baillie Smith, M. and N. Laurie, 2011, 'International volunteering and development: Global citizenship and neoliberal professionalisation today', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; Devereux, P., 2008, 'International volunteering for development and sustainability: Outdated paternalism or a radical response to globalisation?', Development in Practice, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 357-370; White, P., 2015, 'The spectrum of motivations, experiences and attitudes in technical development cooperation', Forum for Development Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 89-112]. More recently, development studies courses have emerged. Are they finding the right balance between critical approaches, history and vocational skills? A difference in motivations and expectations between early and mid-late career Finnish development workers was found from earlier research (White, 2015). With this case study we add a focus on the pre-career stage (via questionnaires and interviews), considering the motivations of Finnish development studies students in first year, postgraduate studies and after graduation. The article acknowledges the range of motivations and experience of those engaged with international development. It also considers the tension between critical theory and vocational skills. Competencies for development practice encompass a combination of theoretical knowledge, technical skills, administrative know-how and attitudinal factors. We conclude that co-production, combining academic courses and research, including reflective and experiential practice, is a positive step forward.

Volunteer tourism or voluntourism has become an extremely popular form of tourism as well as attracting significant and growing academic attention (Wearing & McGehee, 2013). In 2001 Wearing defined volunteer tourism (drawing on his own research in community based ecotourism and volunteer tourism in Costa Rica) as: “those tourists who, for various reasons, volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments, or research into aspects of society or environment” (Wearing, 2001:1). The significant growth in academic interest in the topic is reflected in a web of science search for volunteer tourism peer reviewed literature which counts 1 for 2001, 4 for 2008, 15 for 2013 and 41 for 2016 and the publication of a review paper in the leading journal Tourism Management (Wearing & McGehee, 2013) and several journal special issues.

With volunteering recognised for its invaluable cross-cutting role, this paper seeks common ground between national and international volunteering agendas within the new global context created by the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in January 2016. By highlighting the dearth of research at the intersection between national and international volunteering, and by examining opportunities for collaboration and consolidation, the authors propose that now is the time to bring the separate research agendas together.

This chapter highlights the power of volunteerism as a method for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It emphasizes the importance of a relational approach in helping to energize and sustain locally appropriate strategies. Using case studies from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Western Australia and the Philippines, it analyses methods to facilitate voluntary action that makes practical contributions. The case studies demonstrate that the nature and quality of relationships are key to successful voluntary action for sustainability. Volunteerism is shown to have increased the respective community’s capacity to tackle sustainability issues itself strengthening reciprocity, relationships, capacity and ownership. The four methodological principles highlighted for successful voluntary action embed mutual learning and accountability, reciprocal benefit, and foster synergies over trade-offs.