To think voluntourism needs to be called out?

Will they be giving lectures on how to make dumb tic toks? 😂😂😂

One of my friends went out to try to do something like this. She was an extremely experienced and talented nurse, but she had been doing an extremely gruelling job. The job had got to her a bit and she'd gone slightly loopy. She went to India for three months, where the local ignored her completely. She spent the whole time sitting in her room alone and couldn't eat the food. She then got some wild gut infection which was awful.

When she came home she had calmed down a great deal and she went back to the NHS to a much gentler job where she just had to do box ticking. I think the Indian folks did her a great favour tbh.

Fully agree. Funny that you don’t see many 18 year olds volunteering in their own country. Of course going to Tanzania is much more interesting than helping a project in Blackpool or Stoke.

I have just seen another begging post on the local fb community page, 2nd today - it must be the warm weather bringing them all out. they are off to do important conservation work and protect the turtles!!

I can relate to this. I used to work with a woman who was forever sending out 'sponsor me' emails so she could go to litter picking in the Atlas Mountains; or climb Mount Everest for charity; work in an orphanage in Brazil, etc. Effectively, it appears she was determined that everyone else should fund her travel experiences under the guise of 'charity'. In the end, we all got very fed up of being continually hounded for money and her CFuckery.

I never allowed any of mine to do this and ignore any requests from friends for their dc. It's funny no one has ever called me out on it as I will click any link for a local charity etc.
Call it what it is. "My child wants to go and wash an elephant in Africa and spend a morning digging a well. It will make them a rounded individual"
Send a tenner to Wateraid instead

Still looking for a way to justify the (18 year old) white saviour eh?

Again my blunt lecturer said that when she'd had the neonatal death conversation with a previous cohort, one student mentioned the tragedies she'd experienced lambing on her farm as preparation for dead African babies.

I'm sure she mentioned farming on her midwifery application, but I bet she didn't say that dead lambs have prepared her for the inevitable loss one experiences as a midwife in the UK..

Yes, but I wonder what their social media content development skills are? And whether they have any experience of SEO ?
To say that these teenagers give nothing back is incorrect. M

As a midwife- this sort of thing isn’t fair on the women (because actually you learn most about how to manage emergencies, which is the bit that actually needs intervention), as a second and third year student. So certainly a first-into-second year I would say is likely to be little actual use.

But the other thing is it’s really, really unfair on the student too even if they don’t realise it. The likelihood of them being put into traumatic situations where they are out of their depth is significant and if a baby or mother dies while they are the ‘most qualified’ person there, that will stay with them forever and is entirely preventable. If there are companies offering this to people they are doing everyone a disservice.

Well, it's cringe-worthy. Not racist, however - unless we all think 'bloody patronising rubbish' = racist. I don't. It is what it is. My DS went to India for some organisation, but ex-H paid (I refused to have any part in it because I thought DS would be better going straight to university not swanning around on a gap year) and anyway DS has many relatives in India, so part of the trip was visiting family.

They probably already know how to fish far better than the average A level student from London!

It makes me groan.
I would mind it much less if the blurb was 'This is a unique opportunity for your child to see how people are really living in other countries and even to work alongside them for a while, helping them to build a well or school or taking on simple tasks in their business ventures.' Parents who can't afford the hefty fees then might ask family and kindly friends to contribute.
The idea that it is helping the recipients in any significant practical way is patronising nonsense, though there may be some two-way richness in the cultural exchange.

One of the worst things about these programmes is that a lot of them are run by Christian charities, and they will actively try to convert people as well.

A group of unskilled, inexperienced teenagers turning up at a 'third world' village to build a school would be an insult to local men who would welcome the work. A young man asked if he could do some jobs for me as he had to raise thousands to go to Columbia to build a school. I asked him if safety boots and hard hats would be provided and he didn't know what I was talking about. I asked him if he knew how to put up scaffolding safely and the correct mix for concrete. He had no idea. I think kids like him would be a menace on any building site. But I gave him the job of weeding my L shaped vegetable patch for £20. He missed a whole leg of the L shape and dug up my leeks!

It's a con to get money from guilt-ridden and delusional middle class parents and their naive well-meaning kids. The implicit racism is extremely offensive and most schemes put very little money into the local economy.
I know several young people who went on these schemes, teaching English in Nepal: no teaching experience or local language skills. Helping tree planting in Africa: the locals did all the back-breaking labour while the white saviours sat in an air-conditioned jeep. Animal conservation in Africa: shadowing some very skilled and experienced African workers but actually doing eff all work.
I'd have no problem calling it out if the opportunity presented itself. People in the developing world are being used as props for rich kids to feel good about themselves.

Lol. Wasn't there a whole exposé a few years ago about "building schools" where other workers were brought into fix/finish/restart the work overnight. There was a girl who paid thousands to do it & discovered it was all for nothing (& that actually you need experience as a builder to do something like that)

Now I look at all those things like 🤨

I don’t think these companies are charities or CICs. When the company rocked up to my kids school I checked them out on companies house, the accounts were rather healthy to say the least and privately owned.

Poor people aren't a teachable moment for spoiled rich kids.

Does that make a difference? Would you let a bunch of kids build your extension "under the guidance of someone who knows how"? Or is it just people in developing countries who have to put up with this shite?

Could have written this post! It’s so elitist and full of white privilege (and I’m literally not woke at all generally!)

Yeh it’s another form of “white saviour” I have a few friends who grew up in Kenya / Botswana and the Africa we see is the west isn’t what they associate with Africa.

I just don't donate. A child doing A level business studies should learn by shadowing someone who runs a business, or perhaps by setting one up themselves. I do regularly donate to Practical Action, who support people in other countries to develop low impact and appropriate technologies. They're almost entirely run locally and these days the UK is mostly about fundraising.

I stopped contributing to these ages ago. In virtually every case, the work could be done better, faster and more cheaply by locals. I suppose the kids might be able to help with English conversation practice, but the idea that they can teach English - with no training or experience - is a joke.
Having said that, a niece did one of these, thoroughly enjoyed it - even the ‘roughing it’ aspect, and IMO it really did open her eyes as to how so much of the much poorer world lives.
But her dad is loaded and nobody was asked to contribute to the costs of her ‘jolly’.

YABU.

Africa has plenty of successful business men and women, and this narrative that it is a poor and undeveloped continent needing (mostly white) saviours is not particularly helpful. It’s a shame schools and colleges can’t teach their students this, but I guess that wouldn’t fit the imperial wests agenda.