<p>What message are the parents who purchase these expensive trips sending to their children? I think they are saying that it is OK to use suffering third worlders as props–as resume builders.</p>
<p>If one actually cares about the fate of these poor people, one could send the amount one would squander on a trip to a charity that could help alleviate the suffering much more effectively. </p>
<p>Surely the amount of actual help an American teenager could deliver in a week of a “suffering tour” is trivial. The idea that real suffering of real people is leveraged to generate some kind of revelatory experience that can be expounded upon in an admissions essay makes me want to barf.</p>
<p>This is Ugly Americanism at its worst.</p>