3rd February 2009
Check me out at a refugee camp. And look at me teaching poor African ladies how to read. And now I am in a war zone. Cool.

I like telling these stories. They're sexy stories.  People are sometimes shocked and sometimes impressed, but they are never bored.

But, it is time to put old ways behind me. I am not longer interested in Sexy Volunteering. Lemme explain.

On my recent trip to Isabella in the northern Philippines, a friend of mine visited a prisoner of conscience. This man disappeared one night, and was eventually discovered – thankfully – alive in a Philippines military prison. He had been tortured. He has been accused of all sorts of things, the murder of a political figure not been the least of them. He is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

I don’t know what he is or is not guilty of. But it seems to me his biggest crime was standing up against his oppressive government and saying enough is enough.
He has since been moved from the military camp to a city jail and shares a cell with fifteen other inmates.

I would have loved to have visited so I could see him, hear his story and observe the dreadful conditions he is living in. It would have made for a great sexy volunteering story.

But I didn’t.

Why?

Because there was a chance that government goons would have became curious about the strange white guy and taken his picture. There was a chance that the government might not like me visiting a prisoner of conscience and subsequently kicked me out of the country for being "too political". There was a chance that Meaningful Volunteer would all come to naught.

That was a chance I was not prepared to take.

Sexy volunteering is all well and good, but it pales in comparison to meaningful volunteering.