| dc.description.abstract | Since the 1960s and 1970s, youth missions arose and over the decades short-term missions have become increasingly popular. Young adults favour short-term missions over long-term missions, because they prefer to participate only for a short amount of time. With this increase in popularity of short-term missions amongst young adults, a new actor in development arose. Young adult, religious volunteering groups are important to take into account when discussing the development landscape, because it enhances the understanding of the development landscape in its totality.
Voluntourism is very present in the literature, but short-term missions and the link between development aid and religion is less frequently studied. The way people think about development co-constructs their development efforts and therefore this thesis looked at the narratives about short-term missions, development and daily life changes of volunteers that participated in or provided a short-term mission. Moz Kids served as a case study for this research and participants of their short-term missions participated in this study. Additionally, managers of All Nations Mozambique, the receiving organisation connected to Moz Kids, shared their thoughts on development and short-term missions. The narratives of these stakeholders were gathered by digital interviews. Besides that, a content analysis was performed on the website of Moz Kids.
The volunteers feel like they have contributed to development by helping out at the orphanages, either by taking care of the children or building a baby house. Where the volunteers speak of the short-term mission with a helping goal, the receiving organisation speaks of it as a learning experience. Indeed, the volunteers vowed afterwards that they have learned several things and that they have made changes in their daily lives. However, the group could be divided in two: a group that made small changes in daily life and a group that made no changes at all. The sending organisation is in the middle between the volunteers and the receiving organisation and therefore speaks of a helping as well as learning experience.
Concludingly, the volunteers feel like they have contributed to development through their presence at the orphanages but also by continued support after their short-term mission. Their ideas regarding development aid have changed and a preference is given to small-scale projects of which the local community directly benefits. | |
