Exploring Volunteer Tourism as a Panacea for Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria

Abstract

One of the most intractable menaces that humanity has been battling with several decades ago is poverty. There have been a general consensus about the pervasiveness of poverty and its grave consequences on the well-being of citizens of developing (Nigeria) and least developed nations. Notwithstanding the enormity of human, material and natural resources that nature has endowed in the country which should have been effectively and prudently channeled to alleviate the poverty situation of its citizenry. The said resources have over the years not been properly harnessed and or prudently utilized for societal development. One of the ways to address this cankerworm is economic diversification from crude oil reliance to new areas such as volunteer tourism or voluntourism. This paper examine efforts at poverty alleviation strategies by the government of Nigeria and realized that the efforts has not yielded positive results because the citizenry are still wallowing in abject poverty, inadequate social infrastructure, insecurity, unemployment amongst others as an offspring of poverty. This assertion prompted this study and recommendations among other the utilization of voluntourism that are characterized with financial assistance, knowledge transfer, international connection, integrated national endowment via restoration of environment through skill acquisition, education, cultural immersion, wealth creation and equitable distribution and economic development. We then recommend that volunteer tourism may be adopted as the main antidote for sustainable poverty alleviation if the opportunity is thoroughly harnessed.