Help me volunteer in x country go fund me

[Airconfan]

I wonder if I’m just grumpy but when I see a go fund me that says I’m going to Ecuador in 2028 and volunteering to help various communities. Help me raise £10k to fund the trip.

Just me that finds these annoying, I’m funding you to have a once in the life time trip? Or can someone explain why I shouldn’t roll me eyes and see this in a different light?

I agree. I’ll always sponsor people for activities they do, but a gofundme is ridiculous.

Yep sick of all these begging pages.

I'm sure the people in Ecuador would much rather have £10,000 invested in community projects.

This.
There is nothing that an unskilled inexperienced teen/young adult could reasonably contribute that couldn't be more efficiently provided by someone local rather than importing an overprivileged Brit. It probably is hugely beneficial to the character development of the teen/young adult but they could achieve the same character development with a bit more humility and fewer amazing photographs by volunteering in one of our own deprived inner city areas in the UK. The ££££ required in sponsorship/gofundme is because they won't get off their arses and do something constructive for those less fortunate than themselves in somewhere boring like Liverpool or Stafford but might just about manage it with the bribe of a trip half the globe away.

Agreed. I’m now really direct with people: so you want me to fund your trip? You’ll be volunteering in an orphanage? Why don’t I just give the orphanage the money and they can hire a local for a year instead of getting a foreigner for two weeks?

The last straw for me was when a colleague asked for sponsorship to do a jungle hike in Thailand - I’d done the exact same route for fun on my holiday the week before, it’s a common tourist route, not arduous, and the amount she was aiming to raise would have covered her holiday and then only given a few hundred to the charity.

I am reminded of Henning Wehn on sponsoring people on Room 101.

i got a message from someone I’ve not heard from in years a couple of weeks ago asking me to sponsor them to do a trek in India. He’s almost 50. He can pay for his own fucking holiday to India like I did when I went. Or, donate his own money to the charity. I hate it, it’s such a con.

I feel less angry about it when it’s someone young, not working, etc. But I still wouldn’t donate! They can raise their own funds to go.

Hate it. These people should go out and work to fund these trips themselves. The only ones I donate too are for charities close to my heart.

‘Pay for your own White Saviour Complex holiday, dearie.’

I wouldn't support this unless I felt there was some way that particular person would particularly benefit from going. I imagine that the main benefit to the overseas community is from the money the volunteering scheme brings in, and that donating would be a more straightforward way of helping.

A friend's daughter did this... A trip to Africa, providing stuff for a village they hadn't asked for (in fact the kids has voted on what they would do for them rather than asking) .. I didn't sponsor her because I think it's voluntourism and yes, white saviour bollocks... If they were keen to help these people then but them some time with a health professional or a women's Doctor... I dunno, maybe ask them what they need? All of these kids raised almost 8k each for this trip... There were 11 of them... But you know, they all got their, 'here's me helping poor people' Instagram post. Two years before she was up a mountain somewhere far away drawing attention to something else... again a go fund me situ. Fucking infuriating. This same child now an adult and has gone to Thailand etc helping animals and the 'environment' and she now drives around the UK (not electric but seeks to lecture me about driving an old diesel car), taking her clothes off and diving in the sea pretending she's drawing attention to environmental issues!! She went on holiday with her family and did the same there... Her carbon footprint is astonishing but you know she made a post about it and people liked it, so it is ok.... So much of activism is performative and people don't actually engage with the issues at all.

I feel less angry about it when it’s someone young, not working, etc.

I think, if they're very young - probably far too young to be able to do this kind of thing - I understand much more, when they're too little to be able to grasp how the figures work in reality; e.g. if they sell lemonade, cakes or whatever to make money for a local charity, but they don't factor in that their parents have had to spend money to buy the food/drink/ingredients, and likely as much (or more than) they're actually 'raising' for the charity.

As for those who aren't working, has it not occurred to them that, if they were working, they may well not have the time to go off on jollies, BUT they would be able to give to their beloved charity themselves?!

I agree with PP: they never seem to care about volunteering in desperately underprivileged inner cities in their own country; or indeed in countries that are grindingly poor and happen not to be particularly pleasant, or even dangerous, countries to visit. Whilst obviously not in the same league as places like Norway or Switzerland, Ecuador is in the top half of the world development index. Why aren't they going to 'help' in the very poorest countries, like South Sudan, or Somalia, or the Central African Republic?

I'd be inclined to ask them this directly, if they approached me for funding for their holiday. If they'd find this rude and crass, they started it!! At the very least, I'd want an in-depth chat about how they were specifically identified as the best person to meet this need in a far-flung land - and what skills they alone were able to offer, especially when compared with those of the people with experience of living and working in the country. Yes, they would find it embarrassing and awkward... but again, they were the one with the audacity to ask me to pay for their holiday!

I do agree that it's the height of arrogance: the very suggestion that some random Brit is more valuable to their community projects than a skilled, experienced local. Surely nobody can't see through this clear scam anymore? Even if they did have the skills that are needed to help, it's highly unlikely that there are not already similarly-skilled people already in the country, who will not have to take the costs of travelling halfway across the world and back out of the precious funds available.

Thought this thread was about finding volunteers for cross country running (maybe because of the proposals for y7 and y8 to not do English schools moving forwards) and was going to be all up for donating for that!

I'm not even convinced it goes as far as WSC for most of them; they simply want a lovely free holiday and are using the ruse of generically 'helping poor people' as their excuse to get others to fund it for them!

I was in a shop last week and there was a group of kids from the local private school in. About 16 ish. Kid had arm full of junk food. "I thought you were supposed to be saving for South Africa?" "Well, yes, but we've got the go fund me up now, so no"

I was honestly worried I had missed the point and was irrational angry but seems i am not!

Even when people do do something in this country, it's usually something they enjoy with a little bit of 'it's for charity' thrown in, mainly to fund the thing and virtue signal.

I'd be interested to know how many people choose the charity that they're passionate about and then see what opportunities that charity has available to help; in contrast to those who decide what fun thing they'd like to do, then look for a charity that can enable it, and suddenly become passionate about whatever that charity is. If you replace 'fun thing' with 'earning opportunity', this is exactly the same thing as the chuggers who hassle you in the high street do.

But even if it is a charity about which you supposedly care deeply, you would invariably raise far more actual usable money for them overall if you just donated cash yourself and maybe asked others to give, without incurring the massive overhead for them of you doing your fun jaunt. Absolutely nothing wrong with doing a fun jaunt, but be honest that you're doing it for your own enjoyment and pay for it yourself.

If you think about it, you're actually elevating your own holiday above anything else that the charity does in importance. If, say, it's a hospice, you're genuinely saying that you believe that paying for your holiday is a better, worthier use of the charity's funds than helping and caring for dying people.

This is one thing that infuriates me about charity: when people who are fundraising (however dubiously) - and often the charities themselves - treat the money that they're given as neutral easy-come, easy-go funds which just drop out of nowhere.

There's a total ignorance of the fact that many people give sacrificially, because they care about the cause that they are led to believe their money will be going to (after reasonable admin and other costs, of course). They often go without little luxuries themselves so that the poor, starving babies in Africa can be fed; not so that a bunch of entitled, arrogant hoorays can have a lovely free jaunt, or so that executives can attend luxury back-slapping banquets - and all whilst making out that THEY are the ones doing so much good.