To think if teenage girls from a private school can afford plane tickets ...

[Morgansports]

.... To visit the orphanage in Africa that they have been fundraising for, then the orphanage would be better served by just receiving the money they spent on their tickets. Seriously, what actual use to the orphanage is a group of hair-flicking, ugg boot wearing blondes???

And the bit that made me laugh is that other parents at the school were asked to help fundraise for the girls' trip.

AIBU?

I don't doubt that the teenagers who go on these trips have the very best of intentions, and genuinely feel they are of great help. I also don't doubt that they gain a lot, on a personal level, from the experience. Whether or not they really contribute anything useful is a mute point though. Obviously it may fire them up to do a lot of fundraising when they come back or it may kickstart a lifelong interest and involvement in humanitarian issues.
My only real objection is when they pressure people to donate towards their air fares and their keep. Low key fundraising that does not embarass or pressure people into contributing is fair enough. But hovering at every check out in the supermarket with a vaguely worded 'cause' written on a bucket or asking parents' colleagues to sponsor them on a walk and suchlike is not on, in my view.

Still with Procrastinator and Seeker.....naivety really not charming.Most posters really have no idea how inappropriate all this well meaningness is.

I agree LaQueen. I think that they like to matter as a person and not be just some statistic that you throw money at.

White man's burden innit?

I've often thought this actually - painting an orphanage in some 'Outpost' for eg seems to be a crazy enterprise - the Raleigh Gap Year Yah - another mating ritual of the middle classes.

In my Dd's faith based school we donate half the money made with cake sales, walks etc to the same faith based girls' school in sudan. Nobody spends money going there - the girls have pen pals - and they share photos. It's enough.

and it seems that people who behemently support the trips do so because they are defensive because they did a trip/ want to do a trip/ their dcs are doing a trip/want to do a trip

like i said; all power to you/them, but dont kid on like you are saving the world from itself

Err, no. I have never been on one of these trips, nor do I want to because I support charity in other ways, and my dc are too young to have even begun to think about it.

I don't think I'm kidding myself that these trips are saving the world, I have been very clear that there is equal benefit on both sides of the arrangement, and that I don't think that's a bad thing.

Problem is that many of the people in such places don't want change. The root cause is tribalism and that happened long long before colonialism.

the way it works is simple. If your chief is in power you steal everything you can lay your hands while you can until 'their' chief gets into power. The transition between 'your' chief and 'their' chief is often bloody and brutal.

I don't in any way criticise or look down on the kids that go on these jaunts but I really question the whole money making infrastructure that goes behind it and why the true cause of all the poverty and deprivation is never mentioned or tackled by our Govt. If you want to do something lobby your MP - don't send your DCs to these places.

I think you have to forget about saving the world and see that both sides can have benefit.

Trouble is we sell arms and they sell oil - so no one dare criticise these countries.

Procrasstinator obviously there are some people in some places in the world where what is needed is immediate specialist intervention and nothing else- particularly in the immediate aftermath of great tragedy.

This does not negate the excellent work older teenagers can/and do do with the ill, disabled, and poor. Three groups of people who also accept volunteer help in the UK fwiw.

and it seems that people who behemently support the trips do so because they are defensive because they did a trip/ want to do a trip/ their dcs are doing a trip/want to do a trip

Yesterday we didn't know what we were talking about because we were naive and clueless. Now we don't know what we are talking about because we've done it.

You can't have it both ways! This argument is so pointless.

Obviously it isn't the only way to help people. Obviously it is quite a small thing in that it only benefits a small number of people and doesn't cause seismic change in government operations. (Well not yet it hasn't, who knows what the 20.25 Prime minister did in his sixth form years )

But none of the objections raised above make doing a trip pointless or harmful in any way. Is like saying I'm not going to volunteer for childline because I haven't got time or the expertise to be the CEO.

The only two people who I know who have done this (painting murals on walls at a school in Africa and not sure what in South America) are both very pleasant, blonde, hair-flicking stereotypes). It was for about 3 months and it cost their parents £3,000. One of them bought one child a pair of shoes and then had all the children asking for shoes, which she did not pay for. I am sure that both benefitted from the experience and so did their 'dinner party CVs).

I agree with seeker. I am not sure that any of the £3,000 went to the schools, I think it went to the company who organised the trip and the parents were reassured that their hair flicking daughters were safe.

What irritates me is when sponsorship for these trips of a lifetime are basically cheques for £50 from friends of their parents in a tacit reciprocal arrangement. So only if your parents have friends who understand and can afford this system get the benefit of the experience.

Neither of these two are doing any follow up experience for the host schools; it is just a standard gap year thing. The hair flicking blonde who went to South America met a friend there and much was made of this co-incidence. I managed to get into an argument about this. It was no great co-incidence because all of their blonde hair flicking friends did the same thing and it happened that they used the same money-making enterprising outfits who organised these trips.

If you have to pay to volunteer then I am not sure that you are that necessary. Someone said that the one thing that Africa is not short of is unskilled labour.

It could be argued that buying shares in a mining company would be a better way of providing local employment for locals. Plenty of mining companies fund local facilities.

It is a pity that you have to be rich to have the privilege of volunteering.

I spent every Thursday afternoon in my last year at college stuffing envelopes for my charity and spent two long vacations teaching English. Through an emergency resignation I was delighted to be offered the unpaid post of co-ordinator in the final year. I had to travel around between different projects and the charity paid me expenses for this.

This did wonders for my CV and was an absolute privilege. Afterwards I used to entertain people from the host country who came over on charity business. I have visited Madame Toussauds (sp?) and the London Dungeons more times than I care to remember. (I was working full time by then so I paid for these trips which were just a bit of fun for the host country volunteers.)

It was a highly political charity and a huge education for me. I am not blonde, btw, just got lucky.

You don't have to be rich to volunteer.

As a teenager I was not rich, blonde, hair flicking or privately educated. I still volunteered both home and abroad.

I continue to do this now. As do 1000s of teenagers and adults who are not privately educated.

In the scheme of things though I'd rather the rich parents of the kids I teach spent some money on them going abroad to do good (which they indisputably do in our well researched and organised project), than spent all their money on furthering their children's comfortable lifestyles. Not that I have anything against teenagers who live comfortable lifestyles, but I do think there is value in teaching them a different set of life skills as well.

yanbu. they're going on a tour to have their picture taken with some cute kids and pretend to be princess di for a while (or kate middleton or whatever). It's 'character building' for them but otherwise relatively useless.

why don't they sponsor a child long term instead? Or do something locally? I bet if they had to help smelly old homeless people have a shower they wouldn't be so keen to go, although that would be much more character building.

It is colonialism. And, no, I'm not jealous. But I did live with some hoorah henries doing 'african studies' at uni so had to put up with them thinking they were somehow awesome because they went to Africa once and handed out some stuff. Wowzers.

there is not equal benefit on both sides freddos

the OPs question is 'would the orphanage be best served by receiving the money that would be spent on the girls tickets'?

you can argue that there may be benefits to the orphanage by the girls visit in some instances; but the answer to the question without a shadow of a doubt is, yes the orphanage would benefit much more from receiving the money and not the visitors

what confuses the issue, for many of you, is that your donating or your schools donating money depends on whether the UK students get to go on the visit-so obviously in that case the visit is beneficial

procrass

ouch, really. exactly why I prefer to leave the experts to it

breezy...erm..none! fair point! I do donate to MSF though not a monthly bike tho

unexpected WRT 'do something local'

stop on.....

in the country where I lived, there are alot of street children. the vast majority of them are addicted to glue...from as young as 2 or 3 years old...

id like to see how keen the parents are to encourage their children to work with local recovering drug addicts in the UK?

What is a "hair flicking blonde"?

And why are people so opinionated about how they spend their own money?

What is wrong with young people getting personal benefit from this kind of trip? Character building and personal achievement is a good thing, surely?

Oh Procrass, you are brilliant. I wish I could express myself the way you do. "It's not a fucking zoo Freddo".

LaQueen, if I were running an orphanage I too would welcome an influx of SKILLED professionals to work voluntarily for a few months. What we're talking about here is a bunch of schoolgirls (substitute schoolboys if you want, it makes no difference but the kids I'm talking about happen to be girls), who have spent some months fundraising for a charity and are now going for a ten day trip during half term to 'see' where their money is going. Their flights alone are costing more than they raised. And they are asking OTHER PEOPLE to pay for their flights!!!!

I'm sorry, you either see the obscenity of this or you don't.

laqueen WRT the student doctors/engineers; if you want to actually improve the situation then the most useful thing to do is to fund a local student doctor/engineer within the country to serve an internship/ do volunteer work...so that they benefit from the professional experience, have something to put on their CV, increase their job opportunities...and create an upward spiral for an African individual