To think voluntourism needs to be called out?

It's very "white saviour"

I agree a lot of the time It's very patronising

I thought this was well known?

I take issue with CYP "helping" in orphanages. Orphans need consistent, predictable care to form attachments, not a revolving door of white saviours

I agree and it is important to add that these schemes are regarded very poorly by genuine charities.

For example VSO hasn’t taken unqualified or inexperienced people for at least two decades. They only accept experienced professionals who are willing to work for years not weeks. The projects are carefully designed to work in partnership with local people (rather than replicating existing local skillsets) and to leave activity behind that can be continued. Because anything less than that is pointless and potentially damaging.

Local volunteering is always best!

YANBU at all. As you said, all it is is an opportunity for the teen to go and experience life in an African village for a couple weeks. Nothing more. The family can fund that themselves and making it a fundraiser is horrible. I’d never donate to one.

It's all nonsense and I won't support it personally.

It'll be the "charities" who are benefiting financially. Great experience for the kids no doubt, but it's basically just 3rd World tourism.

My grandad was part of a UN exploratory commission many years ago due to his at the time ground breaking agriculture knowledge. He basically had a mental health breakdown as a result of touring the countries dying on their arse from poverty, lack of information, and no desire to try to support themselves. He said they had the necessary equipment shipped over and it was literally rotting as nobody either knew how to use it, nor wanted to.

The problem is that some countries are legitimately so fucked that people don't even have a starting point to help themselves. Their governments skim donation money for themselves, and the public are generationally reliant on just being supplied with handouts.

I wouldn't call it out directly but I certainly won't support things like that. I guess I might do a bit of passive aggressive 'did you say Fabian here will be advising them? On running a business? Oh! Advising who? Who runs this?'

I can only hope that the organisation is fully aware of what it is doing and won't let Fabian do any actual harm. If it were me I would have Fabian shadowing all the different bits of the business for 4 weeks and get him to do a 10 minute presentation on his great thoughts at the end. While charging his parents him as much as I could get away with.

Find an organisation that is working in a different model and circulate a fundraiser around. Camarados, something like that.

I'm sure the locals aspiring to set up a business will love being patronised by a bunch of A Level students 🙄

I wouldn’t call it out directly, but I wouldn’t donate either. If you don’t have something useful to offer (like MSF for example) you’ll be more of a hindrance than a help and they’ll probably knock down the wall you built before you’ve boarded the plane home ready for the next group of British teenagers to start it again. Unskilled labour is really not a deficit.

If they were talking about visiting orphanages, I might call that out though. There’s real harm in the orphanage industry- taking children from their parents to keep a steady flow of children for the visiting teens to ‘help’ with. And even if the children’s parents were genuinely unable to care for them, we wouldn’t treat children like that here. No British children who have experienced that level of trauma are subjected to a rotating cast of untrained, unchecked Ugandan teenagers, presumably for the profit of the orphanage owner, so it’s not acceptable the other way around. I’d also feel similarly about any wildlife ‘sanctuary’ who allowed them close contact with the animals.

This is hardly a new phenomenon, but why do people feel the need to ‘call out’ things we don’t agree with. Obviously things like child abuse need to be reported, but otherwise just let other families parent in the way they see fit. Don’t donate to things you don’t want to. There’s no need to shame people who decide they want their children to do something different to you.

This bullshit is the natural consequence of capitalism amd monetisation. We see it now in every area from Easter/ pride/ Trans / birthdays / SEN / charities and their chugging... laterly their will swindle schemes.
There are all out there commoditising things.

There is a whole industry built around sending MC kids to x for gap yah/u as. Each person taking a crumbs from the 10k crowd funded biscuit.

YANBU. I'd like to send DS to play football with children in Ghana, but a) will pay for it myself, and b) am under no illusion that it's altruistic; they're doing him a favour.

The narrative you've described is cringeworthy and racist.

Presumably these kids aren’t going on their own and will be under the guidance of an organisation who does know these things?