Easing global poverty is an enormously complex task. To make so much as a dent requires hard, sustained work, and expertise. Even the experts sometimes get it wrong. Critics of the Red Cross’s post-earthquake work in Haiti argue that the half a billion dollars the organization raised for disaster relief was largely misspent. Multimillion-dollar projects undertaken by the U.S. government ultimately failed to help Haiti export its mangos or complete a new building for Haiti’s Parliament on time. If smart, dedicated professionals can fail to achieve lasting progress over a period of years, how then is an untrained vacationer supposed to do so in a matter of days?

Sometimes, volunteering even causes real harm. Research in South Africa and elsewhere has found that “orphan tourism” — in which visitors volunteer as caregivers for children whose parents died or otherwise can’t support them — has become so popular that some orphanages operate more like opportunistic businesses than charities, intentionally subjecting children to poor conditions in order to entice unsuspecting volunteers to donate more money. Many “orphans,” it turns out, have living parents who, with a little support, could probably do a better job of raising their children than some volunteer can. And the constant arrivals and departures of volunteers have been linked to attachment disorders in children.

There are some volunteers who possess specialized, sought-after skills, of course. In Port-au-Prince I lived across from a Catholic guesthouse where groups of mostly American volunteers would spend their first nights in Haiti. Often I’d join them for dinner to hear about their experiences. I remember meeting an ophthalmologist from Milwaukee, who had just spent a week in a remote town in Haiti performing laser eye surgery. He recounted the joy he felt at helping people who were going blind from cataracts to see.

But not all volunteers come with an expertise like ophthalmology. When I asked one of the women who ran that guesthouse why she moved to Haiti, she told me that “a long time ago I felt called to be here, and I came based on that, not knowing what I was going to do.” In many ways, this woman is typical of the sort of voluntourists I’ve encountered. Many are religious — the sort of people who cite passages from the Bible, the Torah or the Quran that encourage followers to help those in need. Surely, they say, “love thy neighbor” takes on a different meaning in a globalized world. To many of these people, simply experiencing a foreign culture is not enough. They must change that place for the better.

Perhaps we are fooling ourselves. Unsatisfying as it may be, we ought to acknowledge the truth that we, as amateurs, often don’t have much to offer. Perhaps we ought to abandon the assumption that we, simply by being privileged enough to travel the world, are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills. Because the mantra of “good intentions” becomes unworthy when its eventuality can give a South African AIDS orphan an attachment disorder or put a Haitian mason out of work.