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Karen Warner

The Rhetoric of Humanitarian Intervention

John Lee

Discovering the Bad in Doing Good:

A Closer Look at International Volunteerism

It is hard not to want to save the world. With images of the countless

humanitarian crises that plague the earth filling our television screens and newspaper

pages every day, it is difficult to sit with a full belly in a warm house in the wealthiest

nation on the planet and not experience the desire to do something…anything. The

increasingly popular trend of spending time volunteering in developing countries seems

to satisfy just that desire. Short-term international volunteerism, taken to include

international travel that lasts any length of time from a couple days to six months and

involves voluntary service activities, give aspiring volunteers- from students on spring

break, to high school graduates taking a “gap year” before college, to baby boomers

encountering the flexibility of retirement, to young professionals taking time off work, to

students looking to pad their resumes, to whole families on “voluntourism” vacations- the

opportunity to play Superman. Certainly at Stanford University international

volunteerism has developed broad appeal, with many students finding ways to dedicate

their time and energies to causes in developing countries during the summer or within the

school year.

However, not all service experiences abroad are created equal, and though the full

effects of volunteerism have yet to be understood (let alone agreed upon), it becomes

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clear with a bit of digging that volunteering in a developing country is not necessarily the

purely beneficial contribution to the world that a volunteer would hope. There is

immeasurable variety in type and quality of volunteer experiences, but there are certain

fundamental issues that apply to all and that are a volunteer’s responsibility to consider

when deciding to work abroad. Before a potential Superman ties on his cape, therefore, it

is important that he evaluate the full consequences of his presence in a foreign culture,

the limitations of volunteer work, and the realistic benefits to aim for with any volunteer

experience in another country. After all, nothing is as frustratingly tragic as to be

unhelpful or even harmful when the intent is quite the opposite.

International Travel: Setting the Basis for Volunteerism

The complexities of international volunteerism have yet to be entirely understood

in large part because of the relative novelty of the field as a whole; international travel

itself is something that has only become a possibility for the average person within the

last half a century. With international volunteer opportunities so utterly reliant upon and

related to travel in general, it is worth noting the past progression of international travel

trends and their consequences in order to start an overall analysis of service work abroad.

International tourism first became “accessible to broader segments of the global

population” with the introduction of commercial jets after World War II (Mastny 10).

Since that time, the World Tourism Organization, an affiliate of the United Nations,

estimates that the number of international tourists has increased 28-fold, with a growth of

7.4% in 2000 alone (Jenkins xiv). As the world outside a person’s home country has

become increasingly accessible for individuals in developed nations, the international

tourism industry has not only grown in number of travelers, but has also experienced an

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evolution in the variety of preferred travel destinations. Desirous of new and “exotic”

locales and experiencing a “growing displeasure with heavily commercialized, overrun,

and polluted destinations,” tourists of the last couple decades have shifted interest more

and more toward developing regions and away from traditional tourist hot spots in the

Americas and Europe. The share of the overall international tourism industry taken by

East Asia and the Pacific alone, for instance, rose from 1 to sixteen percent between 1950

and 2000. Parts of Africa and South America are not far behind. (Mastny 12-13)

With the spread of foreign travel into increasingly undeveloped areas there has

been an emergence of criticisms of the environmental and humanitarian effects of

international tourism. The negative consequences of tourism, including foreign

dependency and reinforced socioeconomic inequalities brought about by resort-infiltrated

economies, overcrowding and resource usage conflicts, the rise of crime, and losses of

cultural identity, have gradually crept into the social consciousness over the last decade

(Brohman 59). This consciousness has led to the creation of the burgeoning trend of

“ecotourism,” a concept that emerged in the 1980’s but only in recent years has gained

more mainstream popularity. Ecotourism now represents only 5% of international

tourism but is the fastest growing segment of the industry, expanding at over four times

the rate of most other types of tourism (Johnston 6). Also called ethnic tourism, nature

tourism, adventure travel, sustainable tourism, and a number of other euphemistically

satisfying terms, ecotourism is any form of travel that claims to benefit local communities

and the environment—or at least avoid the harm done by typical tourism.

The trend speaks to a desire within certain portions of the global travel industry to

be somehow morally “above” the mass tourism that has gained a negative reputation.

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Travel writer and broadcaster Dea Birkett believes that the regular term “tourist” is in fact

becoming so negatively connotative that soon it will become extinct, replaced by

expressions for “un-tourist” trends that allow world travelers to participate in forms of

travel presented as beneficial for host communities. As she states in an essay

appropriately titled “Re-Branding of the Tourist,” the “re-packaging of tourism as

meaningful, self-sacrificing travel is liberating. It allows people to go all sorts of places

that would be ethically out of bounds to a regular tourist” (Birkett 5). The concept of

alternative tourism and the popularity of the shift in emphasis from global exploration to

exploration “with purpose” have even been acknowledged (and supported) by the United

Nations; while 1967 was declared by the UN to be the International Year of the Tourist,

2002 was made the International Year of Ecotourism. Ecotourism has both its

supporters- who claim that when successful, ecotourism lives up to the International

Ecotourism Society’s definition of “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the

environment and sustains the well-being of local people” (Jenkins xv)- and its critics, like

Birkett, who say that alternative packaging of tourism simply puts a mask on still-

damaging tourist behavior, which many ecotourism opponents claim leads to ineffective

development (Leech), disrespect toward indigenous peoples, and the crippling of local

communities (Johnston).

It is the conflicting views and foundational thoughts and trends surrounding

ecotourism that make it directly pivotal to the discussion of volunteerism. The two

mirror each other in their dependency on the growth of international travel, and in their

reflections of public interest in both the exploration of less developed or less traditional

travel destinations and in the “responsible tourism” method of travel that seeks to make

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international journeys more “life-enhancing” (Mastny 12) and beneficial. Typically,

ecotourism is viewed as normal vacation travel done in an educational or environmentally

conscientious and people-friendly way, while trips that classify as volunteerism include

or focus on participatory actions taken by the traveler that somehow contribute to the host

community; the descriptions are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The two concepts are

even difficult to differentiate at all at times, and completely overlap when one adds the

trendy term “voluntourism” into the mix of words used to describe portions of the world

travel spectrum. However, it is this difficulty in clearly classifying the two that gets to the

heart of the most important of their commonalities: both are simply words that cover a

wide variety of organizations and individuals, none of which can be automatically judged

as beneficial just because of positive assumptions assigned to their labels. Short-term

volunteers abroad and international ecotourists are both, ultimately, visitors in cultures

and lands apart from their own, and as such have similar potential to be ineffective or

harmful during attempts to do good. Therefore, in determining the effectiveness of

international volunteerism it is critical to analyze both the negative and positive

consequences carefully, remembering that just as the name “ecotourism” does not protect

programs from the risks involved in traditional tourism, neither is “volunteerism”

immune to those issues associated with any other form of travel.

Untying the Superman Cape (from here on)

To begin an examination of international volunteer opportunities, it is important

to consider the basic questions that international volunteerism, like tourism, raises about

the negative effects a foreign presence in general may have on host communities. In

addition to the “cultural erosion” often cited as an effect of foreign visitation on

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indigenous communities, observers of international volunteering programs suggest that a

loss of dignity for local peoples is a common concern. When volunteers approach a

volunteerism experience with a paternalistic attitude, something condemned in Ivan

Illich’s famed anti-volunteerism speech “To Hell with Good Intentions,” most analyzers

of volunteer situations describe the resulting projects as having a “condescending nature”

(Salazar 99). In many cultures impacted by development projects, foreigners are

regarded with a certain degree of awe or unsolicited respect, meaning that any such

condescension can easily lead to the exploitation or disrespect of locals. Annie

Wilkinson, a 2006 Stanford graduate who spent three summers volunteering and

researching in East Africa during her undergraduate years and now works for the Global

Fund for Women, remembers feeling extremely uncomfortable with the automatic

authority she was granted as a white outsider during her first stay in Uganda, and found

that a sense of humility was key to avoiding overstepping any bounds as a foreign visitor.

It is very possible for wealthy foreigners to “reinforce differences” with their presence in

a developing region, and it is easy to see how volunteers who “think of themselves as

martyrs,” as Wilkinson calls them, or who feel they have come to “save” a part of the

world could contribute to their own perceived status of superiority (Wilkinson). This goes

even for, if not especially for, aspiring “Supermen” with the best of intentions.

This cultural separation and potential lack of respect for local populations plays a

part in contributing to a second major problem associated with international volunteer

work: the loss of local voices in the design and implementation of projects meant to

benefit communities. A lack of cultural intimacy with the problems being addressed can

lead to inappropriate project design or “overly ethnocentric Western approaches”

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(Sommer 85). When programs meant to aid a community are not led by members of that

specific community, subtleties and appropriate prioritization of problems can be lost.

Language barriers alone can limit the effectiveness of foreign volunteer efforts, as

Wilkinson noted in describing her experience working as a counselor for HIV/AIDS

patients during one of her summers in Uganda. She felt that her work was well

intentioned, but that she often thought about how much more effective and appropriate

counseling in the patients’ native languages and from someone sharing their cultural

identities would have been (Wilkinson).

The intervention of foreign volunteers in a society also always stands the chance

of taking away job opportunities from what is usually an already fragile economy. While

volunteers who, say, build a well in Rwanda are providing free labor and allowing

resources to be used that may not have been available otherwise, there is the potential that

the well could have been built by Rwandan workers in great need of employment and

whose boosted salaries could have gone back into improving the local economy as a

whole. Take a situation observed by Washington Post correspondent Michael Dobbs

during a stay in Sri Lanka to assist in relief efforts after the tsunami in 2005: Along the

coast where he was working, some German divers had volunteered their time to retrieve

boat engines that had washed out to sea, until one day when a stick of dynamite was

thrown in after them. Apparently the German divers had angered local divers who had

been charging $50 for every engine they retrieved- a rare and desperately needed

opportunity for the divers to earn some income.

Even if an aid project incorporating international volunteers does not retract from

local job opportunities, though, there is still the question of sustainability. “Too often

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projects are seen as entities unto themselves,” writes nongovernmental organization

expert and consultant on development to many US agencies John G. Sommer. “There is

an important need for evaluation of the political, social, and economic structure as a

whole and of each project link within it,” according to Sommer, as well as a need to

realize that large change will result from “politics, not program agencies” (Sommer 82,

138). With international volunteers sometimes staying for as little as a few days to work

with a project, many question what real good they can accomplish. Even stays of many

months present issues of sustainability: What happens when volunteers leave? Does their

work continue to be implemented or to have an effect? How does their work fit into long-

term change? Ilana Golin, Program Director of the Fellowships program at the Stanford

University Haas Center for Community Service- which develops student leadership in

service and includes among its fellowships funding for students to serve overseas during

the summer- states that the two- to three-month fellowships she oversees can certainly be

seen as short, and that the volunteers cannot necessarily expect to make significant

change within that amount of time (Golin). This sentiment was certainly reflected, as

well, by each of the three Stanford alumni interviewed for this paper who had served as

Haas fellows themselves or as international volunteers in other capacities, who all

brought up the same issue of time limitation, and the feeling of needing to find a way to

“make what you’re doing sustainable” (Ragin).

The theme of sustainability in international volunteer projects was explored in a

Flemish case study on an NGO called Vredeseilanden, which organized “Culture and

Project Journeys” for volunteers to incorporate contributions to development projects into

trips to Senegal, Costa Rica, Tanzania, and other destinations. The study found that the

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volunteers’ presence did contribute a bit of money to local economies during their short

(less than three week) stints in host villages, but that the projects supported by the

organization and worked on by the volunteers were simply too small in scale and short-

term to make significant contributions to the impoverished communities they addressed

(Salazar). And while every program and organization is different, all volunteer

opportunities face the common challenge of making projects they tackle beneficial

enough in the long-term to host communities to justify the complications and troubles

presented to the communities by their foreign presence- all while the very nature of

international volunteerism is that the volunteers, the implementers of the projects, are

only involved in-country on a temporary basis. Furthermore, certain trends of

international volunteer organizations such as seasonal issues (many more volunteers

come during summer months than any other part of the year, despite the fact that the off-

summer rainy season is often the most trying for those in many of the impoverished

regions being addressed) and the natural bias of development programs toward those

individuals with access to services or living near the spatial NGO “hubs” that have

developed, add further limits to the potential for sustainability and wide-spread effects of

international volunteer efforts.

A final fundamental risk associated with volunteering in developing countries,

and with development or aid projects in general, is the creation of a dependency

relationship between the host community and the organization or individuals providing

the service. Foreign aid is often criticized as having a crippling effect on recipient

communities, particularly when the aid is seen as coming in “hand out” form. Some say

that people learn to not take care of their own basic needs when those needs are being

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met by outside providers, or, less harshly, that when a people does not have ownership

over the development and economic stabilizing of their own society, there is little social

impetus or ability to facilitate upkeep. David Abernethy, Professor of Political Science at

Stanford whose courses include “Controversies Over Foreign Aid” and “The Politics of

Development Planning,” considers the issue of dependency key to defining the success or

failure of a development project. He gives the hypothetical example of building a house

in a third world country through Habitat for Humanity, the well-known NGO that creates

low-income housing: constructing the house is great, but it will always be seen as

foreign-made. Later, when the house starts to wear down or needs repairs, the local

response may be to ask where the “rich people” are to fix it. The ultimate value of a

project, therefore, can be seen as what happens when the infrastructure created by the

volunteers crumbles; if people have become dependent upon the outside aid, the project

has failed. Development aid should “supplement self-activity,” according to Abernethy,

but unfortunately for volunteers looking to be beneficial with their time abroad, it is

difficult for a development program to not “undercut self-reliability” by its very nature.

(Abernethy)

Redefining the Superhero

Observing all of the risks and negativities of volunteering abroad, it would be

easy to throw up one’s hands and dismiss all efforts to help as hopeless; there are

certainly those who have done so. It is particularly hard not to question whether any

money a volunteer spends on their trip would not be better used just as a direct donation

to a cause, rather than going toward the volunteer’s own travel and program costs so that

they can do work themselves that may not even be effective.

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However, it would be inaccurate and unproductive to not recognize in a critique

of international volunteerism the incredibly rewarding and valuable aspects of service

work abroad, and its potential to do the world a great deal of good. The United Nations

calls volunteerism an “important component of any strategy aimed at poverty reduction,

sustainable development and social integration,” and has developed an entire web site

devoted to helping people find ways to volunteer in an array of modes across the globe,

with an entire sections dedicated to voluntourism and short-term programs (World

Volunteer Web). Surely the work of ordinary volunteers would not be seen as so valuable

had it not proven to have some significant redeemable qualities.

First of these qualities would be that while the positive impacts of foreign

volunteers on host communities have been observed to have limitations and battle the

constant challenges of sustainability and cultural relevance, there have certainly been

amazing instances of project success in the history of volunteerism. It is hard to argue

with at least the short-term value of many actions taken by volunteers, such as providing

a child with food, constructing a school, or teaching a teen to read. And while taking

away jobs from the local workforce is a concern, there are definitely volunteer positions

that could not, or would not, have been filled otherwise by the local populace alone,

either because of resource limitations or other reasons. Catherine Baylin, a 2006

Stanford alumna who volunteered as an HIV/AIDS educator in Tanzania during her

junior year, now works in Egypt for a program through the University of Cairo that finds

placements for international volunteers and has started a nonprofit of her own called

Marhaba (Arabic for “welcome”) to provide service opportunities in Egypt for foreign

volunteers. The program that Marhaba supports, a literacy project through the university

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that teaches English to the native Egyptian workers to give them skills necessary to

facilitate their economic mobility in the community, would not be able to exist, according

to Baylin, without the international volunteers. Not only do the volunteers contribute to

the project as native English speakers, but they are the only source of teachers during the

summer when the Egyptian college students who also teach for the project go home for

break. (Baylin) In such a situation, it is easier to see the value, however small or

temporary, of an international volunteer to a target community.

Beyond the variable benefits of the projects on host populations, global volunteer

efforts have been cited to also create benefits for a volunteer’s own country. Having

individuals volunteering their time in developing countries serves as an automatic

ambassador program for the volunteer-sending nation, a way to foster positive relations

and goodwill. Golin, the Haas Center Fellowships Program Director, considers the

presence of American volunteers attempting to do beneficial service work in other

countries to have the potential to “dispel the ugly American myth” in host communities

(Golin). The American government seems to agree. One U.S. policy brief states that

“overseas volunteer work is a form of soft power that contributes measurably to the

security and well-being of Americans,” arguing that volunteer success can be measured

both by the impact in the country where the work is done, and by the impact in the

country of the volunteer. It concludes that more support should be invested in

international volunteer programs because they “represent one of the best avenues

Americans can pursue to improve relations with the rest of the world.” (Rieffel) Perhaps

more importantly, though, volunteers bring back knowledge and cultural understanding

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they gain during their time abroad, contributing to the overall sense of global awareness

within their home communities.

The benefit that is almost universally declared the biggest positive attribute of

international volunteering is the effect on the volunteers themselves. The main hope for

most organizations providing short-term volunteer opportunities is that the participants

will be provided with knowledge, skills, and inspiration to go on to make greater

contributions to the world of service or international development, and if nothing else to

be better and more aware global citizens. Professor Abernethy speaks for many with

international volunteerism experiences in their pasts by noting that such experiences can

be “life-changing” for the volunteer.

This certainly appears to be the case looking at our small sample of Stanford

alumni. Baylin, with her new nonprofit in Egypt, states that her major interest in Africa

began with her two-month teaching stint in Tanzania as an undergraduate, and that while

a volunteer may play a very minor role in a program they work for, the lasting effect on

the volunteer can be immense (Baylin). Annie Wilkinson, who now works with the

Global Fund for Women after numerous experiences in Africa, has similar sentiments.

She also listed a sense of humility while giving aid and a wariness of critiquing other

cultures as incredibly important sentiments she gained while volunteering abroad, while

noting the equally important opportunity to review the U.S. and self-criticize in a way

only possible with a fresh, outside perspective (Wilkinson). Ron Ragin, a graduate from

the class of 2005 who was awarded a Haas Fellowship to work as a teacher in Capetown,

South Africa during the summer of 2004, states that it was his experience in Africa that

cemented his interest in philanthropy and really defined much of his subsequent path. He

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is now working with an organization in Chicago that consults on effective philanthropic

work, and hopes to return in the future to South Africa to do research and make a bigger

contribution to the community. He says that the experiences he had working in

Capetown exposed him to poverty unlike any he had ever comprehended before and

made him a more aware person overall. Even more tangibly, he gained skills that have

allowed him to form better relationships and serve more effectively in every aspect of

life, such as the ability to offer himself as a resource but not a source of control when put

in a position of authority, and the incredibly important ability to truly listen to those you

are trying to help. (Ragin) Abernethy and Golin themselves were both deeply affected by

experiences they had overseas during or after college, also; all those interviewed and

most volunteerism analysts seem to agree that no classroom experience can quite

compare to the learning through exposure that occurs while volunteering abroad.

The aspect of international volunteerism that best encapsulates its potential for

more two-way benefit, though, is the overriding theme of cultural exchange. Not all

experiences abroad result in intimate exchanges between native and visiting individuals;

it is very possible to visit a developing nation but remain in a bubble of fellow volunteers

and project leaders either because of safety concerns, or project designs reflecting an “us

and them” mentality (Simpson) through practices of degradation or lack of cooperation

with native populations as described earlier. However, a report of the UN Secretary

General determined that “the traditional view of volunteering as purely altruistic service

is evolving into one characterized by benefits to everyone involved, in other words

reciprocity” (United Nations: General Assembly). Indeed, in the instances where

opportunities for personal exchanges are grasped, the experience can be extremely

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rewarding for both parties. Through programs with components such as home stays or

opportunities for intercultural relationship building, much can be learned on all sides

about how other people live, different values, and how it all fits into a collective human

identity. As Abernethy expresses, in measuring the effectiveness of volunteer trips it is

simply impossible to quantify the “human dimensions;” no one can put a number value

on human contacts, on individual relationships, on the building of a global community.

Yet these may be the most important aspects of international volunteering.

Maximizing Benefits, Minimizing Harm

Taking the number of valid benefits and detriments that can come as a result of

international volunteerism, it would clearly not be wise to declare the practice as a whole

entirely good, or entirely bad. However, knowing the potential consequences of

volunteering does enable us to apply certain principles to the analysis of individual

organizations and projects in order to minimize any harm that could be done while

maximizing benefits to all involved. Drawing from the overview of pros and cons

provided, numerous qualities of volunteer projects can be identified as specific traits to

avoid or to strive for, but most can be brought together into just two major principles to

be applied to any conscientious international volunteer effort: thorough education of

volunteers, and full involvement of the local population being affected by the project.

Firstly, a deep education of a volunteer before and during their time abroad on the

culture they will be working with, the causes they address, the local language when

applicable, skills needed for effective participation in the project (with relevant training),

and appropriate volunteer practices can narrow many of the risks associated with foreign

travel. As Baylin points out, being knowledgeable about a culture and place before

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visiting it is only respectful; communication is made easier, offensiveness is avoided, and

better awareness helps limit accidental intrusions or disruptions of local processes.

Furthermore, if personal and motivational effect on the volunteer is going to be

considered a major purpose for volunteerism, it should be made sure that the effect is as

meaningful as possible. The less ignorant a volunteer is about what they are doing, the

more they will be able to pull away from the experience and better equipped they will be

to put what they have learned to use with future actions that address the humanitarian

issue or region of concern. Golin, who would like to see a shift in the perceived focus of

volunteerism to emphasize the concept of “service education,” notes that organizations

that include full orientations for volunteers, particularly those that incorporate significant

pre-thought for volunteers to clarify for themselves their own motivations and goals,

seem to be more successful overall; observing the pre-field experiences of the alumni

interviewed, it is indeed the case that the volunteer experiences they referred to as the

most influential had all been preceded by classes or educational process relevant to the

subject matter or culture they were to address during their work. Meanwhile, in the

Flemish case study on the short volunteer trip agency discussed previously, very few of

the interviewed participants experienced a shift of attitude, behavior, or thought after

their trip, but they had received no extra education or training before or during their

excursion related to the place and people being visited or the work they would be doing

(Salazar). Given the importance placed on education of the volunteer by the individuals

interviewed with extensive backgrounds in international service, it seems likely that the

study subjects’ lack of personal effects could very well be due in part to an absence of

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appropriate preparatory thought and learning to facilitate getting the most out of (and

giving the most during) their time abroad.

The second principle that should be remembered with conscientious volunteering

is that the creation of dialogue and cooperation with the population a project is addressing

truly seems to be the best chance a project has to avoid doing harm and achieve at least

some level of effectiveness and sustainability. It is important to specify “the population a

project is addressing,” because experts have pointed out that it may not be enough to

work with “natives” of a region since local elites may be “as divorced from the mentality

of the urban poor as are the foreigners” (Sommer 84). A rule of asking a community what

they need, finding out straight from them how or if outside aid could help them, is the

first step in minimizing the irrelevance or culturally inappropriate nature of some foreign

presences; truly, the only “ethical and effective” way to implement international

volunteerism, according to Golin and the “Principles of Ethical and effective Service” put

together by the Stanford Haas Center, is for targeted people to be “truly heard” (Golin).

The Overseas Development Program agrees, stating, “The Private and Voluntary

Organization should make itself actively accountable to the local group, sharing power

over the program with that group” (Sommer 85). Keeping the local community involved

during every step of the process automatically makes for more intimate cultural

exchanges with volunteers, reduces the dependency complex, and does much to improve

the prospects for sustainability of any volunteer’s actions. A computerized study of thirty

six rural development projects in Africa and Latin America scored projects numerically

based on measures such as increase in the small farmers’ incomes, increase in ability to

self-help, increase in agricultural knowledge, and the degree of probability that benefits

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would become self-sustaining. And while, as has been discussed, it is admittedly difficult

to summarize the success of development projects quantitatively, the study did find a

strong correlation between the maximization of project success and involvement of the

farmers receiving the aid; when the farmers were involved in the decision-making

process, particularly during the implementation stage, the efforts were much more likely

to succeed and see long-term benefits. Combining this sort of community

communication with a thorough education of volunteers is truly the best way to make a

project more likely to minimize possible harm or ineffectiveness while bringing out the

positives of the international volunteer experience.

An international volunteer probably is not going to save the world; most will find

that the world has a lot more to give them than they could ever hope to contribute back.

However, there is no excuse to let the fall of the Superman cape mean the acceptance of

ineffective or harmful work in developing countries, nor to let it cause a complete

stopping of international volunteerism altogether. With careful self-critique and

awareness, education and intercultural cooperation, it is possible to join or design

organizations and projects that will avoid the greatest risks, and make the most of the

invaluable two-way positives that can result from a volunteer experience. The potential

for individual, human change-- conversation by conversation, brick by brick, person by

person-- becomes endless, and suddenly the world has the ability to become a team of

superheroes, saving each other while they save themselves.

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