Young Australians continue to be enamoured with voluntourism, and the concept of lending a hand while exploring the world is most definitely enticing.
The Global Work & Travel Co., which operates out of the Sunshine Coast, has had to pay back $25k in partial refunds to 29 travelers after they encountered a stack of issues on their trips. Some participants even jetted all the way to Sri Lanka and Kenya to find that the volunteer programs they had signed on for weren’t even there.
The ABC spoke with participant Ingrid Micallef, who said she found her program “didn’t really exist.”
Faced with spending three months in Kenya without friends or family, she said she “just had to get my butt into gear and make my own plans.” After liaising with the Office of Fair Trading, she’s decided to donate her refund to the shelters she worked with in the country regardless.
FWIW, Steve L’Barrow of the Queensland OFT said the company was “unethical and indifferent” towards the claims, but the company itself says they’re working as hard as they can to keep matters above board.
“We are a very fast growing start-up company, and in that growth process, we have overlooked a few things,” a statement reads, and the company also says “customer trust is hugely important to us. Where we’ve made mistakes, we will use those as lessons as we grow forward.”
