The NTHU is not the only university leaving part of its organized volunteer services for students in the hands of Joy Tang and the oneVillage Foundation. Also the Leavitt School of Business at the Santa Clara University lists the oneVillage Foundation as a partner for its Global Fellowship Program, and OVF's application for 2011 can be found online here. (However, to this day it would seem that only one volunteer from this university has visited OVF, accompanying OVF representative in the U.S. Jeffrey Buderer on a visit to Taipei in the fall of 2009.)
As any organization working with interns or volunteers would know, taking care of people with very little experience in a particular field can be both challenging and time-consuming. The upside is of course the potential benefits that can be gained through low-cost assistance and especially of future positive ambassadors for one's organization at the end of the term. It is a commitment that few organizations would enter into without a clear purpose for what they want out of the exchange.
The question then is what motivates the OVF to take such an interest in students? In a conversation with fellow blogger Ulrike Reinhard over Skype, OVF's founder Joy Tang explains her concern with the Taiwanese students who have been received yearly by the OVF people in Ghana since 2008:
"My own experience with working with Taiwanese young people. Just in a very short period of time, less than two full years, this collective learning, the consciousness or ... space of learning for them has really expanded. From the very beginning, they would ask a question like: "Are they barbaric?" This kind of shocking language, almost to your face you want to cry for them! But you cannot really punch them in their face! And how, where is this from, where is this coming from? Is it from media, is it from your parents? Is it from your school? Is it from your peers? You ask them; in their very sincere way I think they will listen with their hearts. And then provide methods, guide them, walk with them, coach them, going through this process of investigation. So that before you even deliver this bundle of treasures ... to another group of people you know that they have already prepared themselves in the best of themselves. And they are trying to do that, I think whatever they pretend is to be applauded. And I think that is what we need to give to our young people - all over, everywhere!"http://www.catboant.com/category/conversations/joy-tang/ (Can we learn to applaud each other? Conversation between Joy Tang and Ulrike Reinhard, Dec. 22nd 2009; 30:45-32:30)
Through the partnership with OVF, universities submit their students to the guidance of Joy Tang and her team of OVF people who present these young people with very limited experience of the international community and no prior knowledge of Africa to sites and people approved and selected by the OVF. The OVF will introduce their visitors to representatives of the real people they claim to be helping, who instead turn out to be OVF staff in disguise or personal friends. The result is such blatant "mishaps" as the report on the Stoughton Home Orphanage, where the students were fed the story of how this came to be but had no frame of reference of their own that would allow them to question whether wild elephants are in fact to be found trampling around the fields in Ghana...
Another word for what Joy Tang and the OVF are doing with the students is making them undergo a process of socialization - though the OVF terminology for this would be undergoing a transformation with the aim of freeing oneself from what the OVF considers is standing in the way of effective learning and development. Socialization is a process by which individuals learn to conform to the norms and roles that are required for integration into a particular community and network, based both on adhering to certain explicit rules but also on striving to meet the perceived expectations of the group in question. Though some degree of socialization is always to be expected and also desired, to the OVF this is more than the natural process of learning to function in a new environment. As Joy Tang explains in her interview, this is an objective in itself of the volunteer program: "And then provide methods, guide them, walk with them, coach them, going through this process of investigation. So that before you even deliver this bundle of treasures ... to another group of people you know that they have already prepared themselves in the best of themselves." In other words, by providing the methods, guidance, a continuous presence ("walking with the") and coaching, the students are made to see the OVF version of the world and how it should be interpreted.
When such a process explicitly targets people who lack the tools of critically understanding what they are experiencing because they are introduced to an environment far away from their own, then it comes dangerously close to brainwashing.
In her conversation with Ulrike Reinhard, Joy Tang brings up the issue of learning to applaud each other, of expressing and showing gratitude for the contribution of others. Though the idea of applauding as if working towards a better world would be best described as some kind of performance seems quite out of place, it is most worrying when put in the context of the kind of socialization bordering on brainwashing that is practiced by the OVF. Then it has to do with taking away the tools that people are naturally endowed with for thinking for themselves and making up their own minds about something by discouraging questions and dissident opinions, and creating a contained environment of people loyal to OVF with whom to interact.
Teaching what and when to applaud is a most useful way to disguise a fraud and make others see what you want them to see. It only takes one simple question, though, to come free of the illusion: why? True learning can only come from understanding the purpose.
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