This paper discusses the role of institutions in the ethical engagement of Canadian youth volunteers abroad. In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the international field have questioned the ethics of volunteering as part of development, with scrutiny on who actually benefits from volunteering initiatives. Since the 1960s, over 65,000 young Canadians have participated in volunteer abroad programs (Tiessen, 2008), and criticism has increased towards youth volunteers going overseas to fulfill their aspirations to "change the world". This study considered how complex social relations and institutional structures in international development have shaped the issues of power and privilege of the young person's experience in volunteering. The research used Institutional Ethnography (IE) as a method of inquiry, and mapped out the social relations between the experiences of seven former youth volunteers and field staff, and their organizations. Westheimer and Kahne's Active Citizenship and Dei's Anti-Racism theories were proposed as frameworks to examine the presence of equity in youth volunteer programs.