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?

and exotic fruits- again, no one is saying that volunteering is bad, or that money and experts are the answers to everything. What we are saying is that very young volunteers, in short term contracts are not appropriate in THIS situation.

jusfloatingby- and so they should! There are loads of volunteering programmes that they can get involved in locally which will be really valuable to them and not be politically or ethically dubious. I am NOT against volunteering, i have done it for twenty years, I am just against bad volunteer placement (particularly when it puts vulnerable people at risk) which is completely different.

Not for one week in a foreign country but every week in their own country is quite different and there is no reason why they can't work with vulnerable people.

I didn't read it that people were saying the answer is money but the reality is that a lot of these voluntourism trips are of more benefit to the young people taking them than to the people they are visiting.

At worst, focus on cuddly projects like orphanages distracts the focus and the money from where it is needed. I linked above the Farm Africa charity where they help local farmers improve their yields that allows the farmers to move away from pure subsistence to being able to support themselves and their families and send their children to school.

A lot of these build a classroom, orphanage type projects don't mention the involvement of the local community at all. What skills were shared with the local population and what was learnt from them?

Several of DH's nieces and nephews in North Africa are university educated, they don't have running water and the lights regularly go off and there are no jobs for them but they do have a good education and skills. Not only that they are usually bilingual or even trilingual but they are, by our standards, poor. They don't want people parachuting in to help them they just want a chance to help themselves (though with the current political structure who knows!).

They were saying just send the airfare and forget it.

exotic fruits- seriously, there is. Its not impossible with the right training and guidance but really would you want your teenager working with a mentally ill, violently aggressive male with hepatitis, HIV and TB? Or an older person with dementia who was inhibited and being sexually inappropriate? Or for your daughter to tell a chronic drug user where she lives without thinking of the consequences because it just came up in conversation? This is what we mean by vulnerable people.

exotic
I read it more as saying that these girls turning up is not of benefit to the orphanage, it may be of benefit to the girls. If they really wanted to benefit the orphanage the value of their airfares is more use than their physical presence. If they are going to to go they shouldn't pretend that they are doing the orphanage a charitable service by visiting them.

and no exotic fruits we werent . we talked quite a lot about what educational programmes could take the place of the trip in this country if you look. It would be good to have your ideas on that too if you are up for it.

When I was a teenager I volunteered at a playgroup, I helped with mentally handicapped children and I went in and talked to dementia patients ( not all at same time!) I think it was all useful and not harmful to me or them.

yes if you are supervised and supported through the process.

They want to travel- they are not going to donate the airfare and not bother. I agree that they could separate the two- travel and volunteer at home but it is highly unlikely that they send hundreds of pounds to an African orphanage.

All volunteers are supervised and supported- I volunteer for several things now and no one just lets you loose, even at my advanced age! I had training first, I have people to turn to with problems and we have regular updates and evaluations. It would be irresponsible not to.

This has been an interesting thread, a quite complex issue. I wonder what "Africans" living in Africa think of this issue too? Are they just glad of some immediate help or cash and see it as some form of redistribution, or do they resent being treated as a charity?

E.g. I have just been reading a book on Africa by a brilliant Polish journalist. One of the problems with aid provided by the West in the 90s for example is that when the aid arrived in the big cities, the military would often take first cut, which built their power base artificially. Secondly, it encouraged people to leave their villages to come to the cities, as food aid would never reach the hard-to-reach places. Although in the short-term this was understandable, it also meant they abandoned their villages and herds, never to return, and just live an itinerant life in the big cities relying on handouts. I don't know what the state of play is today.

Not to mention interviews and referees before you start.

Why not send them woofing- www.wwoof.org/ I always wanted to do that.

@janelikesjam- I was trying to think of a project that would allow kids to explore how these small interventions have very real knock on economic and far reaching affects in a country. I thought about developing a computer programme but can you think of any other way of letting them explore the affects of aid/development (however well intended) in an educational context?

Hi Smithson. The effects of aid/development in Africa including very recent "voluntourism" is a major issue in its own right, as indicated by this one thread. Even the book I mentioned* (which only mentioned foreign aid in passing) is out of date now. I am sorry I do not have any real suggestions for you as there seem to be so many different kinds of projects of differing value.

(But I do think it is encumbant on the volunteer programmes and the volunteers to try and have some clarity about what they are doing and possible effects and after-effects, though I recognise it may not always be easy to get the full picture).

*The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski, which is a collection of journalistic aritcles on his years spent visiting different parts of Africa - fascinating, beautifully written, though occasionally harrowing reading.

Cheers Jane- just wondering if anyone else had any ideas.

The best idea would be for the firms who make money out of the trips to have meetings with those in the field and find out what would be useful and come up with alternative ways that are actually of benefit.

Pretty bizarre to conclude that those of us arguing against the validity of these programmes are suggesting throwing money at the problem will solve it- have you taken on board anything that has been said here? Also huge assumptions about what people at "the sharp end of the wedge" want.

The last thing you want is to give teenagers the impression that only professionals can help and everyone else just supplies money. Personal involvement is wanted. There are not enough professionals and we couldn't afford them all anyway. We couldn't do without volunteers - everything would fall apart.

Volunteers can be helpful provided they accept that they need to do what the people on the ground actually think is useful not what the volunteers want to do or think is useful.

I am off to bed otherwise I would write a list of all the things that would stop without volunteers- it is so long I haven't the time. Most youth work for starters.