I'm deliberately taking the most cynical slant i can on this....

International Development!

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere teach english in a foreign country to make their jet setting and fetishization of other cultures look edgy and progressive.

In which a bunch of people from the north FLY (at huge environmental expense) to the south to help people there build basic structures which anyone could build, including the people who are living there and will be using those structures. Often privileged volunteers have to be trained before they can be useful, but for some reason they don't just train people WHO ARE ALREADY THERE instead.

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere get jobs or paid volunteering positions at ngos in the south which lots of local people in that area are not only qualified to do but who probably also understand better how to do that job in a way that makes sense in that specific place.

In which a bunch of religious nuts go and impose their guilt and ignorance on people who were doing just fine without it.

In which a bunch of overdeveloped westerners who would probably die within months if they didn't have running water and electricity go to "underdeveloped", relatively sustainable places, "teach" the locals how to live better, often with no real consideration for their means or their most immediate needs, and go home feeling smug because they took cold showers for a few months and survived.

In which a bunch of white people go to exotic places to learn exotic things for a few months, mostly hang out with other white people, and then go home and feel really worldly when they tell their friends about it.

In which privigeled north americans go to south america to buy knock offs of traditional south american crafts, made in sweatshops, which they could have just bought in north america or on the internet, and then take them home and tell their friends all about their "authentic" experience and knowledge of that culture

Not to say that every attempt to "help the underprivileged" is entirely ego-driven, wasteful, counterproductive, ethnocentric, racist or classist. But lots of them are lots of those things.

And really, do we really need more development?
I just want someone to figure out how to de-develop north america back down to something sustainable.

disclaimer: someone i know has made the point that critiquing international development on the grounds that we're a bunch of idiots and folks in the third world know what's up is also sort of a fetishization/idealization of "the other". this can be true.