To think fundraising to send teenagers to Africa is for their benefit not the orphans they are going out to 'help'

[Batwomanrisesagain]

I'm probably being a complete cow but just left my local supermarket where I was asked if I wanted to have my bags packed in return for a donation to help send local school children to Africa. They were going to help the orphans apparently. When I asked the teacher how, she said they would learn about their situation, gain greater insight then come home to raise money for them. I heard another packer tell a customer they planned to build an IT suite.
I asked why not just send the money they were fundraising directly out there to charities that are already working out there, she just shrugged.
So AIBU to think the fundraising is really for the benefit of the English school children, to pay for an 'enriching' experience and that actually if they want to go their parents should bloody well pay for it?
Or am I a complete cow (as the teacher clearly thought I was?)
I did bung them a quid as I felt guilty at not just keeping my mouth shut and saying no Thankyou....

YANBU
Over privileged kids improving their Personal Statements st great expense

My dd went twice. She saved ber own money plus planned some local fundraisers. Some of that money was given to the project. As said just above it changed her whole perspective on life. Her first sentence when she came in home after the trip was we have too much stuff in this house! Wr are not too bad but the contrast was unreal..She worked from morning until night at a very physical job and the money they brought over was used to build an entire unit on the school. They also brought their cases full of school supplies..They travelled on the back of a motorbike out into the wilds meeting families and distributing medical supplies and food. Since she returned she has been hugely involved in all sorts of fundraising and charity work..She buys her clothes in charity shops and refuses to accumulate. She has also got involved in fighting against injustice here and has aspirations to work in that whole area as an advocate. Het colleve degree is related.It was a life changing experience for her.
I as a parent got letters from the place thanking me most profusely for allowing her to come and one little lad wrote me a sweet letter saying he will pray for me forever because l allowed her to go. I dont see it as a waste and if even one of these kids are more aware of refugees or poverty in our own country its worth it.
As a parent l would be all for it. And surely bag packing is better than asking for a donation without shifting their butt.

As a gap year student I went on a "teach third world children" holiday. Paid for it myself/ parents though. When I arrived the school had enough teachers already, when one of the 3-4 English volunteers taught a class the teachers would have a tea break (the teachers weren't overworked btw, they had enough breaks anyway, and it was a private school). One of the young part time teachers told me sadly that he needed to earn more money but couldn't get enough classes. I was awful at teaching. There was no training and the Head was completely bemused that I wanted to observe a class before teaching one. I felt really self conscious at the front of the class, no idea how to teach, no one to show me, I felt the children were laughing at me after I accidentally said something culturally inappropriate in my first class. I ended up leaving early, I felt I was actually making things worse for the children, who could have had their usual teacher if I wasn't there. The other English volunteers did stay and I think were pretty good at teaching and the children did get some benefit from a native English speaker.

We paid the UK charity 2k for a 3 month placement and the host school got 90 pounds for our food and board.

I had been naive and didn't have the skills or attributes to help.

YANBU.
My son did go on one of these. While they were out there they helped every day on the building site of new classrooms for the school. And the money they raised paid for construction materials. Not the most efficient way of raising money but does raise awareness and probably the new classrooms wouldn't have been built without it. Ds's school goes back to the same partner school every year.
But I would never ask anyone to contribute to my son's trip. I asked how much he needed to fundraise and paid that money myself.

When backpacking I met an adult man who had come to Africa to "help with HIV/ AIDS". Was he a doctor, nurse, scientist, social worker, counsellor....? No, just a regular bloke with no specialist skills.
He paid a large amount of money to an international company who signed him up for a volunteer placement.
When he arrived there was a heated discussion between his driver and the host organisation, and he overheard the host saying "I don't want to take this guy, he hasn't got any useful skills and I have to pay to feed and house him"
Anyway, the host organisation did take him and found him a role.... they drove him to the house of a poor person with HIV who would tell him they needed money for food/ school fees etc, and everyone would look at him until he agreed to give them the money from his own pocket! After a month of this he was almost broke and told the organisation, and they replied that his placement was over.
He was upset by the whole thing, but hadn't learnt.... when I met him he said he was still looking for volunteer work with people with HIV/ AIDS because he didn't want to just go on holiday like the rest of us....

Malificent7 your post is almost all about what it did for you, which is the OP's point entirely.

And guess what? The kids loved having me as a teacher, cried when I left and learned some English. It is a GOOD thing for both sides.

Sorry, but this is not a good thing. To have stayed there and committed your life to those children properly, that might just have been good. But for those poor children to get attached to volunteer after volunteer, who then goes and leaves them crying, that's not good at all. You think they don't cry when every volunteer leaves? Do you think English children cry every time a supply teacher leaves? You may want to stop and ask yourself about the differences there. You should read some of the links up thread which touch on just this issue. I'm sure, also, that if those children needed to learn English there are far better ways you could have funded it.

YANBU

It's amazing that all the parents of the children building schools/orphanages do not acknowledge the impact of taking work away from local builders/labourer.

But it's okay because it was fantastic experience of for your child and looka good on their CV

YANBU. I was once naive enough to donate a generous sum to a local teenager embarking on such a trip. They managed about 3 months of the year they were intending to stay for and I subsequently discovered she had a parent earning 4x my wage.
My friend's son did such a trip but they paid for it themselves as she didn't agree with the fundraising aspect.

Yanbu. I'd be happy to donate directly to the place and bypass that. The kids that think they are going to help actually won't or will be a hindrance. The others will just be doing it for the doss.

YANBU. Also celebrities adopting children from poor countries. Why not give a couple of million to improve the lives of more people? Providing clean water, health care, schools, improved housing and sanitation. Also millionaire celebrities on adverts telling me to donate money. They can easily afford to, rather than making me feel guilty because I can't afford to.

If you really do feel the need to help out with the less fortunate, there's a couple of UK charities working in Calais to provide food and clothing for homeless refugees, including minors, who are there.
They always welcome people to help in their kitchens and with sorting donations.
It's a good way to help the less fortunate without having to pay for international flights.
Certainly it's not as glamorous as going to Africa, however many of the people you would be helping are indeed orphans from Africa and the Middle East.

YANBU. My brother did this as an adult. He went to build houses, he's a pretty skilled DIYer, he genuinely thought he could help but he recognised that it was all a bit of a scam....He paid his own way but he was mortified that he had asked his family and friend for money to support the charity he went with and I have heard other people's first hand stories that pretty much said the same.
My dcs didn't even bring the letter home from school....no way would we even consider paying for them to go.

If I can't even trust them to pack my bags properly then they sure as hell shouldn't be trusted to build something or teach children!!

Voluntourism is such a white saviour thing, as said by a PP.

Would you let totally untrained kids build housing for vulnerable children, or a school, here? Of course not.

Poor people do not exist as a 'learning opportunity' for middle class children to sob over. You might as well send them to the zoo.

This really irritates me:
takes jobs away from local people
how many teenagers have experience is building houses, teaching English etc?
Ds's school does this on school trips and has them digging holes and painting classrooms etc - absolutely pointless. Last time in the pre trip meeting I mentioned that perhaps it would be more useful for the students to use the skills they already had to help the local people - eg helping at English classes, not as the teacher, but working one to one with students and enabling the students to practise their English with a native speaker. School did take my suggestions on board, but some students did find it tricky to do the oral practice - so the ideal of older teenagers acting as English teacher is just laughable.

Look into JKRowling's Lumos charity.

The goal is to close down these "orphanages", because they're not. The children have parents. The parents are convinced to send their children to "orphanages" to be educated, but instead they're simply kept in squalor so the owners can raise money selling 'experiences' to wealthy Western children. It is incredibly damaging to the children to have an ever-changing rota of caregivers, and obviously being institutionalised leaves them open to abuse and a lifetime of psychiatric issues.

Our niece is going to do a four-week project in Kenya at the end of Y11. I think it will be a fantastic and probably eye-opening experience for her but I don't know how much the local Kenyans get out of it. I can't imagine that the average British 16yo is particularly skilled at building. There is also quite a lot of fun for the kids who go; for example, they learn to scuba dive. She is supposed to fundraise for it (total cost about £3.5k) so effectively other people will be paying for her holiday (her parents are in a position to pay if necessary and DH will contribute too).

That said, I did do a conservation project after university that we tried to raise a bit of money for (I paid most of it myself - don't think we did much more than a raffle).

There is an attraction near me where they are having a fundraising day to pay for some of the staff to climb Kilimanjaro. Surely they could raise a lot more for the charity if they just donated the cost of the holiday to them? Why should I pay for someone else's once-in-a-lifetime holiday?

Wrt learning to be more compassionate - in the case of my DCs, there are plenty of very poverty stricken areas much closer to home that could have used some help, at a fraction of the cost, and a 'mission' there could have involved developing real, longlasting intercommunity and personal relationships, which would arguably have taught much more and would have been of far greater mutual benefit.

Did I mention a fraction of the cost? I am talking about the difference between a group cost of $60,000 per group trip per year vs virtually no cost at all.

Over privileged kids improving their Personal Statements st great expense
Amen to that.

I still shake my head at the thought of that $60,000. It really bothers me. I am so heartened to see others here with the same gut feelings that I have.

The only useful people to send are those with specialist skills that they then teach to the locals. Our school sponsors a school in another country, and several teachers go over at various times throughout the year (paying for our own costs) and use the time for professional development for the local teachers, as it is locals teaching local children, none having gone through a formal training program, so that is what we are there to help them learn. At times we have also paid for some of their teachers to come here and learn from our school. Occasionally parents/families come with us and paying their own way, but only if they have specialist skills (we've taken a few builders who use their time to teach the locals how to build and maintain the school areas, an IT guy to help set up the computers we donated one year and to train one of the teachers in how to maintain it).

Any money we raise during the year is used 100% directly to support the school (we supply almost all of their consumables, provide learning materials, books, etc). A parent who runs a shipping company arranges everything to go over at no cost to us.

There would be no use fundraising to send a bunch of middle class children over to the school as it wouldn't benefit the school that we are trying to support. Sending white kids to paint a wall doesn't take any real skill, and there are plenty of locals who can do that work. If they want an 'experience' then they can pay for it themselves.

It's the same as sending celebs - they come back more empathetic and aware. They've done no harm and hopefully will come back with a wider world view that will influence their voting, charity and integration choices in future. I think it can only be a good thing to have your eyes opened to what other parts of the world struggle with and understand that they are people too.