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?

Funny, again that you assume my Father is Caucasian!!!!!

There is corruption everywhere. But a lazy assumption that in the African continent as a whole it is the defining factor. And that has been an often posited view here. Plenty of corruption in Cuba. And in Britain, France, USA, Australia, Ghana, Morocco, even the blessed Scandinavians have it. Just less obvious to the unwilling/unable to look further

Can't be bothered to read all the millions of replies, so I'm sure I'm saying what has already been said. But my brother and his school friends did one of these trips, they are generally for their Gold Duke of Edinburgh award. Say the tip is £3k, about £1k will actually go to the charity, the rest is flights and food.

The trip is usually split in two parts, the charity part which usually involves building something, like a school classroom, or a water tower, then th second part will be some kind of trek involving living and working with locals, learning about the country/culture.

Part of gaining the award is that to be able to go on the trip they must do regular volunteering for x amount of time before the trip, a year maybe, plus another x amount of time doing a 'skill' such as a sport.

The whole idea of the award scheme is to get people to be better rounded, and have more than just qualifications, and a better understanding of the world. They are so many benefits for the charity, and the individual.

And the scheme is not limited to 'private school girls' the whole idea is that you HAVE to fundraise for the trip so that it is available for everyone, your parents cannot simply pay for it. The are tonnes of 'inner city kids' that do it and what they gain from it is invaluable.

Please get your facts right before bitching about it on here.

mignonette
No one is denying that corruption exists elsewhere but the lack of a properly established democratic structure makes corruption easier. This is not saying that everyone who lives in Africa is inherently corrupt or that people who live in Europe aren't (MP's expenses anyone!). Stable democratic government makes corruption harder to hide / get away with. DH's country is supposedly a democracy but the TV coverage of the last presidential election was so biased that I don't think I saw the opposition candidate on the screen at all, also during the election for security reasons it was deemed necessary to substantially increase the number of military checkpoints on the roads (which are still there).

Some of the blame for the lack of a proper democratic structure lies with the colonial powers at the time and former colonial powers now who still like to meddle.

Hear hear Chazs although the idea of stable goverment making corruption harder to hide/achieve sits a bit painfully at this moment in time.....

When I did my stint I trained the teacher responsible for Girl Guides. She'd been lumbered with it and had no idea what to do. I'd been helping run my guides since i was 15 and had got my warrant.

Also a hefty portion of the money I paid to the organisation was given back to us to spend on the school.

We only taught english and PE. We were the only ones to actually teach PE. The teachers of course were professonals but they were still impressed by some of the methods we'd used.

Maybe the girls will learn the value of money rather than simply getting into the habit of chucking it at worthy causes.

YANBU in many ways, yes the cash would probably be better spent minus plane tickets, BUT there are other lessons here, and if it makes one of those ugg wearing, hair flicking girls grow up and look at their own lives then I think it's still money well spent.

In my own experience, it wasn't until I'd worked with children who had cerebal pulsy that I really understood their challenges and limits, but also their potential as people beyond their label. I learned a lot about myself, it made me a better person, if I was one of those people that may one day be in the top 1% of richness (never going to happen) then maybe it could have had a huge impact on other people's lives?

Self awareness, education and charity are not mutually exclusive. People can care, whether ugg wearing hair flickers or not, they CAN make a small difference, whether qualified or not. It can be of benefit to both.

Excuse spelling please.

Last year my 6 year old son did a sponsored walk on Mount Snowdon. He raised over 500 quid for a charity that provides, among other things, porridge for nursery school children in a country in Africa. We chose this charity because it had a stellar record of getting money to the recipients and because we were going to visit this country as part of our family holiday. I'm not ashamed of this.

This summer my son learned about the plight of Syrian refugee children in the camps in Turkey. Completely on his own, he came to us and said that we should help them too. He spent 3 months completing a much more physical task and has raised over 3000 pounds. We will be visiting the Syrian children in the camps this half term. We worked up a family holiday around this trip, again I'm not ashamed of this.

A Syrian doctor living in the UK, a trustee of the charity, came down to watch my son complete his task. He fasted for my son that day and there were tears in his eyes when my son finished.

My son has a twitter account, a blog, and a facebook page that have been visited by people from literally all over the world. The money isn't enough to make even a dent in the problem and the awareness he raised would probably have happened anyway because of daily news reports. But he did make a difference to some people though. One person tweeted that my son inspired him to run a 5k, raising more money for the charity. His school is donating money from their yearly walk-a-thon to the charity. Some people have just been grateful to know that someone completely unrelated to their community cares.

I understand there are problems that can't be fixed with a few thousand quid but I do believe that doesn't mean we stop trying.

If we hadn't gone on the first trip to Africa, my son wouldn't have felt empowered to raise money for Syrian children. Now that he's done this, who knows what else he believes he can do? Who knows what other differences he can make?

I think it will be a fantastic experience for the students, and I hope they learn a lot from seeing first hand what poverty in that country really means, how it affects education and healthcare. These "hair flicking, ugg wearing blondes" are our future generation and they should be encouraged to think ethically and morally about what choices they make in life, hopefully this trip will help them see that. Many of them will no doubt go on to become doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers etc, and may well decide to go back and use their skills as a professional. That is certainly what I ended up doing.

However.....as for these silly bikes rides/walks in Peru, China, whatever....completely agree, they are pointless!!!!

Ooh I bet that great big chip on your shoulder has left a big greasy stain, OP.

Why do you think she has a chip on her shoulder boris. She is echoing the opinion of many people, including some of those who work for third world charities. These trips are hugely developmental for the children themselves, but some people hold the legitimate view that the money involved in flying them out and keeping them for a couple of weeks might be better used in a more sustainable way in a deprived area. It's just a viewpoint.

All this crap about jealousy and chips on shoulders and stuff is just bullshit.

Point 1. The companies that run these trips make huge profits. They are not run by aid agencies- they are run by travel agents who have latched on to a very lucrative market. As far as I am aware, none of the international aid agencies backs these trips.

Point 2. Any work that a teenager from the developed world could do in andeveloping country could be done significantly cheaper and more effectively by a local person, who could also thereby keep his or her family, and help preserve the community.

Point 3. Yes, it might well be a life changing experience for the teenager concerned, but they could have an equally life changing experience in th local homeless shelter, where they could actually probably do some useful work, whqt with knowing how to speak English, turn on kettles and work a Hoover. I suspect very few of them will have any practical well building or bricklaying skills.

1. Teenagers (of any sex/background) may enjoy or find valuable a trip to see an orphanage they have supported.

2. However, the trip is unlikely to benefit the orphanage. So it should be seen as what it is, an educational holiday, rather than as charity. So it should be paid for by the teenagers or their parents, NOT by "charitable" fundraising.

Exactly Minipie. Charities already find themselves competing for donations from the public who only have so much spare cash to donate. For teenagers going on a personal development trip to try and get some of this spare money for their 'cause' is unethical, in my view.

OH, and to whoever it was asked whether they don't take brunettes at private schools, they certainly don't seem to at my dd's state grammar school! The quqtity of flicky blonde hair makes the number 6 bus look like a Timotei advertisement

Mmm. I once had a friend ask me to sponsor her on a sponsored walk. The "cause"? She wanted to go on a trip with her scuba diving club. So basically she was asking me to pay for her holiday, in return for her doing some walking .

I've looked quite carefully at sponsorship requests since then.

You find that a lot with bag packers in the supermarkets. More often than not its kids from a local sports club or school collecting for a trip somewhere. Fine, if they're upfront about it but not fine if they're deliberately coy about why they're fundraising and allowed to place themselves at every single checkout.

Oh and for those of you saying its run by big organisations who are makig a profit, this is very much true for gap year students. For the students who go through their school for D of E or similar, it is usually organised by the school, and often lots of schools get together and do it, no profit made.

People don't have to donate to others who are trying to raise money to go on a trip. If they are upfront and honest about what they are doing, and don't pressurise, I don't see a problem.

Minipie, was your friend involved in a beach clean up, or a conservation project or something? I doubt she was just trying to raise money to go on a regular diving holiday.

I think the problem with the op is not that it questions the validity of fund-raising for this kind of trip (it should be questioned) but that it has an unreasonable dig at the girls who's trip has brought this to the op's attention. There are far less snipey ways for the op to get her question across.

I agree. The hair flicking ugg boot wearing blondes could probably also have been described as the intelligent, sensitive and hard working girls.

seeker, you simply can not compare homeless shelter in UK with an orphanage in a third world country. To even think so is blatantly absurd.

Yabu. Very. You also have some sort of reverse snobbery going on. Which seems to be popping up on mn alot lately.
And offensive.
I actually think its a good thing. I know 2 teenage girls who are going to Kenya to help build a school. They are tiny but they are fit and they will do as much as any boy. The fundrasing is a great part.
Oh and these girls as from a very affluent background. They are so lovely, I hope my dd is like them when she grows up.

seeker I disagree with all of your points.