International Volunteer Tourism ― Critical Reflections on Good Works in Central America

Designed to promote reflection and better practices among the prospective volunteers and organizers of travel-for-service experiences,International Volunteer Tourism provides a collection of narratives on short-term international volunteering in Central America written by North American organizers, student participants, and Central American partners. The authors explore lessons learned from specific international service interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, with some attention to Costa Rica and Guatemala. The collection provides a nuanced, contextualized, historically evolving portrait of the increasingly popular practice of "voluntourism" with an eye toward pushing that practice toward meaningful social change.

Katherine Borland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and Director of the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University. She has published on the Politics of Culture in Nicaragua and Honduras and has organized numerous short-term service-learning courses to Nicaragua since 2002.


Abigail E. Adams is a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University. She has led many study abroad and service learning trips in Central America. She has published previously on U.S. military short-term medical missions in Central America as well as on U.S. evangelical Christian church-building and other short-term missions.