[start here] Background to #MendNotEnd

This group developed organically following a fascinating (and now comprehensive) conversation with various voluntourism experts, dealing with the question "Can We Mend, Not End, Voluntourism?"

That discussion quickly took on a life of its own (23k words and counting!) and eventually led to a live G+ Hangout exploring the various themes in more detail, which you can view here.

With the volume of discussion and opinions it became clear that we'd need to separate out the core themes and issues before we can progress the debate any further, so we decided to create this group as the umbrella for the entire debate - a place for us to house all the various discussions, resources, examples of good practice and everything else we want to highlight in order to move the voluntourism discussion forwards.

Everyone is welcome to join us and pitch in. You can make new submissions yourself or use the comments here to raise new ideas with the group.