Volunteer travel: do volunteers for food and accommodation verbal agreements, hidden behind the feelings of "routine"

Source: Workers Daily

Volunteering for food and lodging is usually a verbal agreement, personal safety is difficult to guarantee, and volunteers may become part-time workers

Volunteer Travel: Hidden "Routine" Behind Feelings

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Volunteer travel through short-term, light-labour exchange for room and board is becoming popular among young people. However, volunteer travel may also hide "routines" behind feelings, and should do a good job of "avoiding pits" strategies to protect their own rights and interests.

The "Eleventh" holiday is approaching, and the recruitment information of volunteer travel has opened a wave of "planting grass" in the circle of friends of many young people, especially college students.

Volunteer travel through short-term, light-labour exchange for room and board is becoming popular among young people.

This summer, Yuzu, a second-year graduate student, spent her time on a volunteer trip in Tibet. During her 50 days in Tibet, she saved about 3,000 yuan in room and board by volunteering at a youth hostel. The short video she released to record this volunteer trip also increased more than 30,000 fans for her Douyin number, and until now, there are still netizens who leave messages for consultation every day.

In the desired travel destination, it is the original intention of many people to choose volunteer travel in a way that saves money and meet like-minded friends. However, industry insiders remind that before volunteer travel, they should also do a good job of "avoiding pits" strategies and give their personal safety and related rights and interests an "insurance".

Verbally agreed to volunteer for travel and accommodation

On June 23, Yuzu departed from Beijing and arrived in Lhasa, Tibet, over a two-day period. Originally planning to travel for 10 days, but the youth hostel where she lived was recruiting volunteers, Yuzu decided to stay and "unlock" the volunteer trip.

She and the person in charge of the hostel verbally agreed that by volunteering in exchange for food and accommodation, the main work was check-in and check-out, tidying up the sheets, cleaning and other work. At that time, there were 4 volunteers in the hostel, each working two day shifts (9:00 to 16:00) and two night shifts (16:00 to 23:00) a week. By mid-July, the number of guests was increasing and their work became busier.

The reporter searched and found that at present, many online platforms have volunteer travel recruitment information, in addition to homestay inns, there are bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, farms and other operators are also recruiting volunteers, and some platforms also provide two-way choices of "job search and recruitment". Volunteer travel durations usually vary from 7 days, 15 days to 30 days, with Shangri-La, Lijiang, Weizhou Island, Xiamen and other places being popular destinations.

Ye Zi, the owner of an inn in Shangri-La Ancient City, Yunnan Province, revealed that she has recruited no less than 15 volunteers in 8 years, mostly college students, who are mainly volunteers to save money and experience local life in depth, and some people are in a confused period after resigning or losing their jobs, and want to use volunteering to jump out of fixed circles and rethink the future.

In Yezi's view, volunteers provide more adequate labor for the homestay, which reduces operating costs to a certain extent. Some volunteers will also share their travel experiences on social platforms, which is also good for the promotion of homestays.

In addition to volunteers changing food and accommodation, international and domestic volunteer travel projects that provide volunteer services such as wildlife protection, volunteer education, environmental protection, and elderly care while traveling are also "fanning" young people.

Behind the feelings are hidden "routines", volunteers may become part-time workers

"Meet interesting souls in strange places, meet better selves"... Most volunteer travel recruitment messages use "affectionate" copywriting to hit young people's hearts.

However, because volunteer travel is still in its infancy in China, there are incomplete places in both organizational methods and operating mechanisms, and behind the vision of "poetry and far away", there may be hidden "routines" of "volunteers becoming part-time workers".

"I started working from 8 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m., and I couldn't stand my feet at the end of the day." After the 90s, Zhang Qiang complained to reporters about his volunteer travel experience of "stepping on the pit". He volunteered at a homestay in Dongji Island, Zhejiang Province, and "felt like a free laborer."

The reporter combed and found that most of the "slot points" about volunteers changing food and accommodation focused on the length of work, the intensity and the agreement, poor accommodation conditions, and personal safety cannot be guaranteed.

In addition, some platforms also use the recruitment of volunteers as a secret means of draining fans - you need to forward WeChat public account articles or collect likes from the circle of friends to obtain volunteer application qualifications.

Some travel agencies also smell the business opportunities in volunteer travel. For example, some travel agencies use volunteer service hours certification and volunteer certification as the selling points of tourism products. The travel agency staff told reporters that some college students sign up for volunteer travel in order to enrich their resumes and "add points" when applying for overseas schools. The reporter saw that it cost 1580 yuan to experience the "volunteer day trip" of the panda keepers at the giant panda base.

Raise the threshold for volunteer recruitment and stipulate the rights and obligations of both parties

Most homestay operators and volunteers agree verbally and do not sign an agreement stipulating the rights and obligations of both parties. So, how should we better regulate volunteer travel so that the personal safety and related rights and interests of volunteers can be guaranteed?

An industry insider who has participated in the survey of the online volunteer travel platform pointed out that due to the lack of supervision and the limited number of employees of the platform, it is difficult to conduct field visits to the homestay, so it is inevitable that the description of the homestay is untrue. He suggested strengthening the supervision of relevant platforms and raising the entry threshold for homestays recruiting volunteers.

Hong Guibin, a senior partner at Huiye Law Firm, analyzed that the relationship between volunteers and homestays is extremely unstable, personal dependence is weak, it is a volunteer behavior, it does not constitute an employment or labor relationship, and it is similar to a private helper relationship. Once the personal safety of volunteers is harmed, in order to reflect the principle of fairness and reasonableness, it is generally considered to allow the operator to give appropriate compensation within the scope of benefits. According to the relevant provisions of the Civil Code, homestay operators should also bear the corresponding safety and security obligations.

However, he also pointed out that it is more important to improve the volunteer registration system and restrict the use of volunteers by operators through industry forces, especially to prevent operators from employing enterprises in the name of recruiting volunteers.

"Volunteers in the volunteer exchange of accommodation are strictly a type of 'gig economy'." Wei Xiang, a professor at the Institute of Financial and Economic Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that what volunteer travel needs to solve is how to define this form of employment and include it in the field of regulated employment. He suggested that the platform that publishes volunteer recruitment information should sign an agreement with the operator and the volunteer as a third party to stipulate the rights and obligations, insurance purchase, etc., and at the same time protect the personal safety of the volunteers through the filing system and other means.

Industry insiders remind that when participating in volunteer travel, first of all, we must choose a regular third-party platform to verify the authenticity of recruitment information; before departure, reach consensus with the operator on the work content, duration, accommodation conditions, insurance purchase and other rights and obligations, and sign relevant agreements; volunteers themselves should also correct their mentality and make psychological preparations.

Reporter Wang Weiyan