This article was published today in The Siren, a feminist magazine at UNC. Here is the initial version before the Siren’s edits.

Fall break in Haiti, summer in Kibera, spring break in Honduras. We privileged North American students love to go to developing countries. We love to dress in traditional garb and take pictures with innocent-looking children whose names we ignore. We blog about malaria, dirt, slums, sun, Africa as a country, and use words like “timeless,” “guerilla” and “tribal.” Upon our return home, our pictures with African children become prime Facebook profile picture material.

I may sound critical. I am, because I have been there too. I have some of these pictures, and I have used some of these words in my blog posts. To put it in the words of the writer of the famous Tumblr, Gurl Goes to Africa:

“You go to one of those fabulously elitist schools where everyone talks about privilege, classism, racism, sexism, etc. as if they don’t practice it in real life. But in order to really see the world, they decide to go somewhere where they can understand what their privilege looks like. So they choose AFRICA! Yay! A whole continent dedicated to helping white people understand what it means to be poor and undeveloped.”

Our American campuses encourage pseudo-humanitarism. Working in orphanages around the world is well regarded. After graduation, your summer in Uganda is a resume-builder that will touch your interviewer’s heart. Travelling and experiencing other cultures is necessary, but we need to do it with an open mind. We should reflect on the assumptions we make and observations we share about the people we meet. We cannot think that our presence will change anyone’s life, except perhaps our own.

The pictures you take and show people have meaning. No one wants to be photographed breastfeeding their child or pooping on the side of the road. Like everyone else, people living in developing countries, for lack of a better term, have pride and names, and want to be represented in their best light. Would we want an African child to take a picture of us when we are sweaty and dirty coming out of the gym? No.

Last fall Ian Birrell reported for The Guardian on the harm volunteers do abroad. Many unlicensed orphanages have sprung up, and most children in these are not orphans. Rather, they are left at the facilities by their parents in poor conditions to beg from tourists. Volunteers passing by cuddle with anonymous children and bring their pictures home and leave gifts and money. Volunteerism, according to Ian Birrell, is one of the fastest growing industries in Africa. He concludes that “the harsh truth is that ‘volunteerism’ is more about the self-fulfillment of westerners than the needs of developing nations. Perhaps this is unsurprising in a world in which Madonna thinks it is fine to take children from African families.”

Another tendency on our campus is the popularity of getting involved in “women empowerment projects”. Some of these projects involve giving lectures to women in English about female genital mutilations, domestic violence, sexual education or microfinance. But the reality is that, as 18- to 22-year-old privileged, often Caucasian, female college students, we have little to teach to anyone, especially not to accomplished women and mothers in African countries.  We, who have typically never given birth, have no real experience in microfinance, HIV/AIDS prevention, or ignore what managing a household entails, should probably stop perpetuating colonial patterns of “empowerment”. We have much to learn from these self-reliant women and should scratch out the term “empowerment” from our vocabulary. In Spanish, French, and many other languages, there is no word such as “empowerment”. Rather, these languages use the term “emancipation”, which entails finding strength within oneself, and overcoming barriers independently. This term is usually associated with the history of slavery in the United States, but perhaps it can also be used in different contexts. Empowerment means that one can give inner strength to someone else. It insinuates that the problem is not resources, colonialism, or corruption, rather it is the lack of resilience and motivation of these women. This notion of young American college students empowering African women is therefore abhorrent. Instead of participating in “empowerment” projects, we should work to bring down the barriers to their emancipation. Africans are kept poor and hungry by the international trade system, sick by pharmaceutical lobbies and servile by corporations. And often we may be more efficient working from our homes to unveil the systemic oppression of people in developing countries. Nevertheless, if we decide to go abroad, instead of calling these excursions “service trips”, “humanitarian work” or “development”, we should talk about cultural exchanges or international cooperation. Such terms imply that the visitor wants to learn from the host community, and receive- not just paint schools, dig wells, and blog about weird food and the keen African sense for rhythm and dance.