Mission Trips: Why They Should Be Required In Schools 🏫

Today I’m going to be talking about mission trips.

Over these past couple years, I have gone on a few trips to several different orphanages and group homes. Mission trips are trips done from one place to another where the purpose is usually to encourage a specific group or build up the infrastructure of that segment of society. They are typically done through churches or non-profit organizations, and anyone can take them. They need not be religious, although sometimes they are.

Over the past two years, I taken a lot about mission trips and learned to undo some of the assumptions so many of us have, and I thought I would break down some of the major things going on mission trips has taught me about the major differences people in developing countries vs developed countries tend to relate to each other.

#1: People in developing countries typically have a greater sense of community than people in developed countries do.

In the States (and in much of the Western world), an emphasis on individualism is placed and people once they leave the home tend to be relatively isolated from each other. Even when one is in the home, people tend to treat living in the home as a baby step one takes out of necessity to reach the full level of maturity needed to actualize oneself and attain the Western-American/European dream. It can be very isolating.

But in “developing” countries, oftentimes, the emphasis is generally placed on the much larger network, and community is treated more like of a lifestyle: things are slower, and community is not something people grow out of, but something people continue to live in. Living with family or close to family is much more of a central part of Latin American (Mexico, Guatemala), East Asian (South Korea, India), and certain portions of European culture than it is in the States, and people experience the health benefits and lower rates of loneliness across many different age groups accordingly.

#2: People in developing countries tend to be more grateful for what they have.

There have been studies that have been done that have shown once a person or family reaches a certain baseline for a material level of satisfaction, anything above that baseline will not provide that person with a greater amount of satisfaction - and it even, sometimes, is at risk of creating a drop-off (often, in finances, this correlates to be about $60-80k in annual income).

In developing countries, the material “lack” constantly creates a cylical feedback loop of moment-to-moment appreciation because a person might work for hours and hours on end, and not know how much of their paycheck they are going to keep at the end of the day or still classify as “below poverty level.” And though many people can relate to this both in the U.S. and abroad, it is comparatively more common in developing countries.

A great number of people will work without a promise of security at the end of it, and thus, more of an emphasis is placed on immaterial values, like trust and reliability and the appreciation of one's family. Savings are cheap, and that the end of the day, a disaster could come which could take away everything.

#3: People in developing countries tend to be more transparent and sincere about their cultural experiences.

In developing countries, appearances tend to carry much less weight than they do in the American economy. In the States, having a great network of connections and a large pool of acquaintances is more financially beneficial than having a select number of deep, solid relationships of people you can trust.

In countries with less developed social-economic infrastructures, trust is often more important because you need to know you can trust each other in order to survive. Whether it's corrupt political officials or scarce resources or politi-cultural volatility, knowing how much you can trust a person becomes significantly more important in an environment in which being a part of a tight-knit community becomes necessary to survive.

#4: People in developing countries tend to be more generous and resilient because they have been forged through greater degrees of material suffering and multigenerational hardship.

Many families in developing countries spend several generations trying to make it out of their baseline level of poverty, and this teaches a different degree of resilience because people sacrifice what they have for their children or their children's children, often giving up what they have now for the promise of a future they might never get to see.

For many of the kids who live in these countries, the idea of having access to a public education or a more institutionalized way of life is often a baffling one, or a foreign idea at best. The idea of just “going to college” or “inheriting a fund” doesn't exist.

In Conclusion:

It is possible that in empathy culture, having a heightened concentration of mission-goers in developed countries could resolve a lot of internal socially systemic identity issues, such as the pursuit of individualism and the need to accumulate high amounts of wealth. If we wish to become more developed as a society, it is possible that considering emotional development and social intelligence might play just as prominent a role in a child's development as the role that is traditionally played by one's academic education.

Having a heightened concentration of cultural/class-missionaries (visitors of one culture going to those of another culture; civilians of a “developed” social class visiting people of a different social class) could alter the nation’s sense of unity and create a deeper sense of purpose, and help us establish greater relationships with our neighbors abroad, as well as lay the seeds of relationship that, once developed, could help us bloom into a more harmonious-yet-sovereignty-retaining, culturally-fluent and socially interconnected world.