Once in a lifetime trip disguised as fundraising for Charities

[staveleymum]

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for people raising money for Charity. People asking for sponsorship for things like Marathons, 1000 miles walked in a year, midnight walks, etc. I'm also on board with Red Nose Day, Children in Need, PTA fundraising, kids clubs fundraising and everything else that seems to constantly need money to run.

BUT I just don't get fundraising for things like hiking up Kilimanjaro or funding a trip to Borneo (for a 16 year old) to build a school or some such similar. Both these events need to raise £4,000 so they are on facebook, justgiving, etc trying to raise the money. My issue is that of the £4,000 needed how much will actually go to charity. This covers flights, accommodation, food, guides, etc - surely this is just something that they want to do as a personal thing and wrapping it up in Charity and getting others to pay for it?

I'd love to walk over Sydney Harbour Bridge but I wouldnt dream of masking it in Charity and hoping others will pay for it with perhaps 5-10% of the money raised actually going to the Charity?

I know I don't have to sponsor but I'd rather just give the donation directly to the Charity. AIBU?

I remember at school we had a presentation from World Challenge and even then it seemed like a giant scam - spend £4000 to go abroad?

You could plan your own amazing adventure with £4000 without getting someone else to organise it for you!

I was also put out by their suggestion that we fundraise - as though it were a charity thing rather a business!

Some of the walks in challenge trips are unchallenging due to the nature of the people going on them - cancer survivors, people who have had heart attacks et etc.

Those I'm fine with - it's essentially a big tourist thing designed for people who have been through a lot and may not be v fit to meet others and challenge themselves when they thought their lives were over. As long as cash is properly going to the charity, I think those are OK.

Voluntourism or money being siphoned off onto expensive ad campaigns, not so much.

Rosehippy you pay someone £5 a day. Are you being sarcastic?

Omg Humanitarians of Tinder

The school mine go to do fundraising for these kind of trips, but the pupils don't get to go when they are at school. This year they raised money to send four builders somewhere to teach locals building skills and to assist/supervise in building a new medical centre. Last year they raised money for books for a school and for a year of salary for a teacher, but no-one actually went. There was a lot of excitement this year because one of the builders was a former pupil. I think I prefer their way of doing it than sending a whole cohort of 15 year olds out.

That said I'm a bit guilty as I'm gathering sponsorship for an abseil at the moment. In my defence however, I'm terrified of heights, it's my idea of hell and it wasn't my idea. Basically I have sadistic friends/relatives who seen an advert and are all willing to donate a chunk of money to see me terrified. At first it was a joke, but then when I realised they were serious I felt it was a bit shit not to do it for the sake of the charity when it'll only be a few [terrifying] minutes.

Rosehippy you pay someone £5 a day. Are you being sarcastic?

Wages in the developing world can be very low, unfortunately. A labourer earns about that much where I live, too.

Blue -- imagine what they could have done with $1,000!! Your DD should have just donated that money. Are there no people in need where you live??

"A shack 'built' by c.30 kids, so c.£21,000 being the cost of said shack - Enko have you got ANY clue how much good £21,000 pumped in full directly to the local economy would do? It would provide employment for local builders, provide PROPER homes for families. It would NOT be a vanity poverty porn trip for kids whose parents should know better, nor an excuse to try and foist a made up 'religion' onto those gawped at in said poverty porn tourism.
"

It says £1455/person here? www.urbansaints.org/mex17leadersinfo

www.urbansaints.org/downloads/Building_Manual(1).pdf

My estimate of building costs:

1256 ft * 2x4 = £300
9 * plywood = £50
8 * roofing roll = £60 ?
2 * chicken wire roll = £20
8kg wire = £4
30 sacks cement = £90
18 mud sill anchors = £8?
8 hurricane straps = £4
3 sacks cement fibres = £25
29kg nails = £25
6 cubic metres sand/gravel = £60
1 gallon roofing tar = £15?
2 windows = £20
1 door = £25
3 hinges & door knob = £5

So somewhere around £700. Add in local labour and you could build it for £1000 no question.

"Rosehippy you pay someone £5 a day. Are you being sarcastic?"

No? That's how much labourers earn.

They've got the money & now they want the fame, if they just nipped off & did it quietly no one would know or care.

This reminded me of that Catherine Tate scene where the woman was collecting for a different charity every week.

Rosehippy you pay someone £5 a day. Are you being sarcastic?

Many countries have far less per day living wage. Those sherpas that carry backpacks up to base camp at Everest? 60c a DAY. Climbing a fucking mountain with loaded several backpacks.

But its far better to have that £5 in a local brickie's pocket bringing it home to support his family than doing him out of it with Gary the 15yo and his mate doing the work instead.

I know a woman who quit her well paying engineering career to volunteer to build water and wastewater facilities in Africa. Her charge out rate for her expertise in the UK is hundreds of pounds an hour. She takes nothing, not a single penny, only gives. That to me is something worth digging deep into the wallet for. They work with local authorities, local workers and help up skill them.

As for 18 year olds straight out of school teaching English - it's amazing how many people seem to think that just because you can speak your native language, you are also qualified to teach it.

A dd of mine did teach English to older children in a SE Asian orphanage, but she was a foreign language graduate who had also done a very rigorous and demanding TEFL course - not one of those crappy online things. The orphanage was very close to a major tourist site and most of the jobs the children could eventually hope to get would be tourism related, where English would certainly be an asset.

She taught for free and cost the orphanage nothing, since she was in the country anyway and supporting herself by giving paid lessons elsewhere.

Bang on Rose - so the same amount of said kids going for £700 each to build one 'home' would, in the local economy, build 21 homes AND provide local employment.

Yet folks like Enko seem to delude themselves that their wholly unskilled DC is really 'making a difference' And that without even touching on whatever other nausea inducing 'message' Urban Saints insist on delivering too...

My daughter is 18. In December she went to Florida, to Disneyland with a charity. She had to pay £1,200 towards her costs. She paid half of this herself and crowdfunded the rest. She also had to pay for her own visa, passport and UK travel to and from the airport.

She has worked part time since she was 16. The £600 she paid herself was out of her wages.

She was out there as a family supporter. Basically she pushed wheelchairs, buggies, carried bags, fetched food, helped families through airports and onto buses. She was working from 8am until 11pm some days. She had one day off in 10 days.

Yes, she had an amazing experience, yes, she had a full day to do whatever she wanted but her help (along with another 39 volunteers and a full medical team) ensured that 25 families with very ill children could have a holiday of a lifetime.

5foot5 What county are you in? (Asking for a reason as am wondering if I'm thinking of said same school!)

Cheshire

My husband has run a few marathons for the Children With Cancer charity at GOSH. He got the marathon places on his own merit and paid for his own flights and accommodation when he went abroad so every penny raised went to the charity. He raised huge amounts mainly thanks to his workmates and employer who was very generous. They keep asking if he will do another one but he says the old knees aren't up to it.

Yes yes yes... I climbed Kilimanjaro twice. Paid for it myself both times.... the second time I went with a group of friends and we decided to fundraise at the same time raised 15k BUT BUT BUT all of that went to the charity as we paid for our own holiday!

The house in the SA video on urban saints site is a typical government built style of house in SA. Two rooms and a pipe outside. Fucking shocking. The government her don't have the brain power between them to give their people decent homes with more than 2 rooms, whole families cramped in that, no proper use of the size of the plot, a two up, 2 down style seems to be beyond them. But the number 1 arse hole here, with his 4 wives and 22 children has a compound all to himself, bastard! So much for a new SA and rainbow nation, Mandela must be spinning in his grave!

Some years back, I did a trek along The Great Wall of China in memory of my late sister. I went with a charity that funded research into the illness that killed her.

It was a tough trek for me but between us we raised over £100,000.

Having read this thread, I can see why people might object - it was an amazing experience and, although I had to raise £4,000 in sponsorship, our flights were paid for.

Someone on this thread questioned the worth of trekking the Great Wall for charity - good point. We weren't volunteering our services to repair the damaged parts of the wall, for example.

Looking back, one thing that made me uncomfortable was the fact that a bunch of westerners went to a country with a sad history of cruelty towards its people.

The locals must have thought we were awful - every night there seemed to be some kind of "party" with booze and noise.

At the time, I thought it would be a great way of remembering my sister and raising funds to cure the illness she died of.

Now? I'm not so sure..

YANBU In my high school in the last year they wanted to take us in the summer for four weeks to build a school in Africa. Two weeks working and the other two weeks were safari and scuba diving as a reward for the hard work.

Everyone had to pay £3000 or something, they said to raise the money via charity which the school organised some like bag packing etc but the school said the rest would have to be paid for by the parents if we didn't raise enough.

Of course I couldn't go, it was way too expensive and all of the parents ended up paying more than half as they didn't raise enough. Apparently they last two weeks were the best ''holiday'' ever according to my friends.

Completely agree with this. There's an annoying woman on Facebook who spent ages fundraising for a Great Wall Of China charity trek... £5k I think she needed to raise for her holiday. She bullied everyone into donating for months and then a week before she was due to go announced she wasn't doing it as she'd hurt her foot. What a twat.

YANBU. Perhaps I'll sponsor someone to do something they would loathe doing, but there is no way I will fund someone to do something they would really like to do but feel that other people should pay for it.

If someone who is terrified of heights agrees to do a parachute jump to raise money for the disease their terminally ill child has, fair enough - good cause, good motive, the person is doing something they would normally never consider.

If someone else wanted to do a parachute jump, but decided rather than save up their money they'd latch onto some charity or other (usually not a charity they've had any previous concern about - just the one that happens to be doing parachute jumps at the moment) and ask everyone else to fund them, there's no way I would pay.

I firmly believe that charity fundraising in all forms should be done because the person believes in the charity and wants to support their work. Charities are there to do good, not enable people to have subsidised holidays.

If you've raised £1000 to do a parachute jump for Oxfam, well done, but remember that the charity would be better off if you gave them the WHOLE £1000 and paid for the jump yourself.

There is also the question of deliberate misappropriation theft of donations. Children at my child's school were raising money to send themselves to Africa a couple of years ago - a few thousand pounds were needed per child. They took part in all manner of fundraising activities - sponsored swims, cake sales, etc etc. Slowly the number of children dwindled as they realised how far away they were from their individual targets. What did they do with the funds raised so far? They didn't go to charity, that's for sure - iPhones, clothes and PlayStations were the "deserving" rewards for their "charity fundraising".

Theft, as it's known.

self indulgence thinly disguised as acts of charity

These poverty porn gap years really piss me off.

YANBU