Volunteer Projects Designed & Led by Local Communities

In this episode of The Devon Taylor Podcast, Kimberly Haley-Coleman, Founder and Executive Director of Globe Aware, challenges some of the most common assumptions about international volunteerism—and offers a more honest, effective model for how it should work.

Drawing on 25 years of experience running programs in 25+ countries, Kimberly explains why concepts like “poverty tourism” and the “white savior complex” persist—and how they can be avoided when projects are designed, led, and owned by local communities. Rather than volunteers arriving to “fix” things, she describes a model where communities identify their own priorities and outside volunteers come in as partners, not protagonists.