The Best Books to Read Before Volunteering Abroad

There’s an automatic trope in the West that volunteering is inherently “good.” I’ve spent much of my career unpacking that idea. It’s the heart of my book, The Volunteer Traveler’s Handbook, and part of why National Geographic named me a Traveler of the Year in 2013.

The trap is what Courtney Martin calls the reductive seduction of other people’s problems: the belief that problems in other countries are easily solvable. They just need a better water pump. Mosquito nets will solve the malaria problem. Just make the playground generate electricity for them.

These books are how I learned otherwise. Some of them were a slog, even for me, so I’ve sorted them by how hard they are to get through. If you read only one, start with the first.

Start Here: The One Book Every Volunteer Should Read

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Grennan signed up to volunteer at an orphanage in Nepal partly, he admits, so his year-long trip around the world wouldn’t look so self-indulgent. Then he discovered that many of the “orphans” had living parents who’d paid traffickers promising to keep their children safe from Nepal’s civil war. The book follows him as he stops doing what felt good and starts doing what the kids actually needed: finding their families.

I connected with this one right away. On my own Southeast Asia circuit, I volunteered at an orphanage in Cambodia just before doing monastery volunteering in Nepal. My Cambodian orphanage was transparent about what it really was: more like a boarding school, where rural kids could live so they could access a better school. That honesty is rarer than it should be. It’s funny and fast, and it lands every lesson on this page through a story instead of a lecture.

Readable Books About Poverty and Aid

The Big Truck That Went By by Jonathan Katz

Katz was the Associated Press correspondent in Haiti when the 2010 earthquake hit, and he stayed to watch billions in aid pour in and largely fail. The line I highlighted when I read it: “The urge to help seemed to have overpowered the desire to do so thoughtfully.”

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Katherine Boo spent years following families in Annawadi, a slum next to Mumbai’s airport, and the book won the 2012 National Book Award. It’s a sad read, and there were times I left it untouched on my Kindle for days. But it’s valuable for that very reason. The book is not about fixing them or the situation; it is about their truth. Read my full review.

The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun

Braun asked a boy in India what he wanted most, and the answer was a pencil. That exchange became Pencils of Promise, which builds schools with communities in Laos, Ghana, and Guatemala. It’s a founder’s memoir, and it reads fast.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Most volunteers arrive believing the world is getting worse. Rosling, the statistician behind one of the most-watched TED talks on global development, spent his career showing it’s getting better, just unevenly. It’s the book version of the talk below, and it’s on my list.

Going Deeper: Books About the Economics of Aid and Development

These are denser. Pick one and make it a nightly nightstand read.

Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

I read these types of books for the perspectives. I like to learn from informed people at the leading edge of development work, and this book meets that criterion perfectly. The authors ran field tests over 15 years, and the stories add such a human perspective to the entire topic. Their approach won them the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics.

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier

Global poverty is falling rapidly as more countries develop stronger economies. But the bottom billion, and the countries where they live, are the core issue in the developing world now. Collier brings in geopolitics, history, and development data to explain why those countries keep failing. It’s the easiest of this group, and the perfect place to start if you want a thorough introduction.

Portfolios of the Poor by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven

The authors tracked, in detail, how families living on about $2 a day actually manage housing, food, and emergencies. Those first-hand accounts transform the book from commentary into a deeply resonating account of that reality. The World Bank has since raised its extreme poverty line, but the stories hold.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Why are some countries rich and others poor? The authors argue it comes down to institutions: whether a country’s political and economic systems include everyone or are built to extract from the many for the few. Acemoglu and Robinson shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for this work.

Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

A Zambian economist argues that decades of foreign aid have hurt many African countries more than they’ve helped. It’s the rare book in this debate written by someone from the places it’s about. For anyone traveling to Africa with a mind toward do-goodery and volunteering, read this book first.

Charity Case by Dan Pallotta

Pallotta argues that judging charities by how little they spend on overhead cripples them. The stat that stopped me: the general public gives 75 percent of the money donated to charity each year. I would not have anticipated that figure.

Watch and Read Online

• Hans Rosling’s TED talk (below): the talk Factfulness grew out of. His graphics and running commentary turn what could be a mere lecture into a dynamic discussion of global development—it’s way cooler than it sounds.
• Rutger Bregman: “Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash”: I super dig the idea of trusting that the poor actually know how to spend money.
• What Happens When an NGO Admits Failure?: This TED talk is refreshingly honest about what didn’t work in his own NGO and why the development sector needs to publicly admit, scrutinize, and learn from its missteps.
• Two essential pieces from Courtney Martin: “The ‘Third World’ Is Not Your Classroom” and “The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems”.
• Volunteering and Voluntourism: The Good, The Bad, and The Questions You Should Ask: Dan and Audrey have spent years on the road visiting projects and social enterprises, and they share what they’ve seen unfold.
• The Psychology and Ethics of International Volunteering: my deeper look at dignity and dependency.

If all of this seems overwhelming and far more complex than you anticipated—good. That’s really the point. It’s complex, there’s grey area, and there is never a clear-cut answer.