Kids fundraising to "build schools in Kenya"

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A family friend is 15 and is planning to go to Kenya next year to help with building schools or something. She is supposed to raise about £2000 towards the trip and is struggling to do so. So far most of the donations have been family members and family friends. Her parents have had to lend her the money for the deposit etc. This is partly due to not putting in a lot of effort.

AIBU to think a 15 year old is too young to undertake a trip like this and to be expected to raise so much money. I was under the impression these sort of trips are usually done by students between college and university, so aged 18+. Also AIBU to somewhat resent being expected to donate money which I would prefer to donate to a charity which I believe might actually make a difference (not teenagers going on holiday under the guise of "helping" local people).

It depends how the trip is ran and the organisation.

Small local charity takes children overseas with qualified teachers (who'll teach), school builds a school to school link, ongoing contact between schools, uk school fundraises for the overseas school as part of a lasting comitment, students who go on the trip end up passing on the charity's work and doing ongoing fundraising as a result - probably a good thing

Large charity / voluntourism / world challenge type organisation running 'experiences of a lifetime' for westerners to chat about their time on Af-ri-caaah' - I'm not a fan and find them all geared up to giving westerners nice little anecdotes to get them through to 21.

No YANBU I would not donate a penny in these circumstances. One of our babysitters advertised herself on FB to raise money for such a trip and in addition to babysitting she ran a coffee morning and did various other things. I think her parents did pay some of it but she raised most of it herself which is exactly how it should be, not asking friends and family imo.

No I didn't contradict myself. I had nothing to do with booking it (I'm only his wicked stepmum) I had no idea who it was open or that there would be fundraising, I was as ignorant as a lot of people on this thread were and I just thought we'd end up paying when I first heard about it..

Yanbu. 15 is too young for many children, both for the fundraising and also for the experience. Although I'm sure some would cope, many, like perhaps your friend, won't.
I am also suspicious of the whole thing, seems a bit of a bandwagon these days.

@sweeneytoddsrazor you are asking the wrong question though. It’s not whether the British child benefits, surely? It’s whether the village they visit benefits? Only if it is worth it to the village/ country they visit should this be encouraged. And if it is just the cash they raise that benefits the village then there should be honesty about that rather than the pretence these children have really “helped” to build a school

Why don’t the Kenyan government build schools with the aid money they receive from the U.K. and elsewhere?

Fuzzy the children in Africa, or wherever, aren't treated like zoo exhibits either. They love interacting. (I regularly go out to Indian and African orphanages and schools when I'm at work). The U.K. Kids spent time with the little ones helping them with their reading, or whatever. The elder ones in the schools became friends - a lot of them wrote to each other for a few years.

YANBU. People in Kenya do not need inexperienced British 15 year olds to help on building projects. They'd be better off raising £1500 each which could be given to a charity in which would enable local people to build the school. The remaining £500 could then go towards a fun holiday for the 15 year old which would be more accessible for less well off students.

The more well off you are the easier it is to raise money. Whatever money making scheme you come up with the money raised is ultimately going to come from family, friends and neighbours, if they don't have £2000 to spare between them you won't raise the money.

I will never give a penny to any of these organisations, wealthy Westerners coming over to 'help' and 'volunteer' are not helping to solve the problems these communities face, it often sustains things like faux orphanages. Rather than spending the money on flights, vaccinations and equipment for the 'volunteers' (and not forgetting the week of r and r that is inevitably tacked on the end of the volunteering) all the money could be put back into the local community, pay the tradespeople who are there to build the school or dig the well, pay a teachers wage for a year rather than making children endure a succession of inexperienced volunteers.

An acquaintance of mine went abroad to communities in poverty as a 'business advisor' at 20, total and utter pisstake, such arrogance that his 'expertise' can help someone in a culture he knew nothing about and had never experienced. It makes me very angry.

Silk there would be no charities if governments did everything they should do in an ideal world. No foodbanks, no homeless organisations etc. But we cannot stand back and wait for this ideal world. Even if one village is helped its better than nothing. If one school has more equipment, one well is dug its a step forward.
I don't like it if its a joy ride but l have known kids educated by donations from my own family because my uncle went there years ago and set up contacts. Those lives were changed because he went. Thats worthwhile.
My bil worked in Africa for 2 years. When he came home he spoke to dhs family about a friend. They, literally, emptied there pockets there and then and he sent the money to his friend. Little effort.
Twenty years later he returned. Friend showed him how he had bought 2 houses with the money one to live in one to rent. He was made up for life. His kids were educated. His extended family was helped.
Feck that waiting for a government : people can be helped now so why not do it.

Perhaps, they could help set up a birth control clinic to try and stem the tide of poor little children who are born into poverty. I think many people would donate to that.

My school always did these every two years, the people who went loved every second and learnt a lot about other cultures.
They had to raise similar amounts and I never heard of anyone struggling as a lot of the fundraising was done at school - could this be an idea for

Pressed send too soon
For your family friend? It helps start the teamwork needed for the trip as well as a group of people could take part in the fundraising at school and they'd need to learn to work together

Building is fairly skilled. I don’t see how a teen can do this effectively.
I can understand teaching or skilled workers doing this type of thing, but teens doesn’t make sense.
Fortunately I am not a university admissions tutor but this sort of thing make me suspicious when on a job application.

Depends on the details.

My school did something similar. The students run a variety of fundraising events through out the year, with minimal teacher/parent input. The money was then used to built one room schools in remote areas of our country. We didn’t do any of the actual building, but a small group of representative students would visit and see the finished school.

All I know is a young relative got sucked into this and found it really horrendously stressful to raise enough. She was nowhere close so pulled out and then there were arguments from people who'd contributed about the money she'd raised, whether it should still go to the charity or not... She felt so guilty about pulling out it made her really stressed out just at GCSE time. It was overwhelming and too much.

We didn't get as far as her going so not sure of the ethics of that.

Kenya does not need unskilled teenagers to come and do building work. There are plenty of unemployed unskilled people looking for work in their own country.

If the western world want to help they should donate to reputable charities.

I hate, hate these things. It’s poverty tourism. Nothing more. Raise money if you want to, yes - but then find the most appropriate local charity or community initiative to send it to.

DS2 came home from school today raving about possibly having the chance to do some voluntourism in Malawi. I said he wouldn't be doing it and now he's not speaking to me.
There seems to be a whole industry that's sprung up around these things. We've been invited to a talk from the company running it -- a company, not a charity. Clearly there's money to be made and that money should be going straight to the people who need it, not to line company directors pockets or to pay for some 15 year olds to have a very expensive holiday.

Another one who thinks the only people to benefit are the UK kids going. No, they can't build - and if they just do painting then there are skilled local people who would be happy to earn a tenth of what it's cost the teenager to get there. If ten kids go - that money could pay for a qualified local teacher for over a year. And no one in the UK, unfortunately, needs to travel outside the country to see poverty and misery whichever county they're in. And quite a number of our local schools could do with help painting, helping children to read etc.

m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_4834574

"Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue."

It's an excellent way to help universities and graduate employers sift through applications for the "right" kind of people, like any gap year experience abroad. Obviously those kinds of sums won't be raised by a bake sale in a deprived area - you need family, friends and neighbours able to donate significant chunks of cash to hit that sort of target.

And of course sending a teenager to do a skilled job is not going to help nearly as much as sending the money to hire locals who know what they're doing to do the work. How many of us would be happy for their kids to sit all day in a school building that was put up by well meaning teenagers? You'd be nervous every time there was a stiff breeze.

All the posters saying oh, no, you're wrong, they know a child that went and it was fabulous for them, team building skills, new outlook etc etc are spectacularly missing the point and I don't understand how!

The OP is about teens doing some sort of personal growth experience at the expense of the communities they are supposed to be benefitting. So they pay for it, big whoop. Imagine if that £2000 sent a doctor or nurse or other needed professional instead of a wide eyed teen with no idea how to actually help!

DP is a builder and would love to go and help build wells or hospitals or schools after he lived in Africa as a child. We just simply can't afford for him to get there or be gone from here to do it.

Surely it would be better for this sort of fundraising to send qualified professionals instead of kids? (not meaning DP, but funds to MSF earmarked for a Dr to go for example)

www.huffingtonpost.com/pippa-biddle/little-white-girls-voluntourism_b_4834574.html

This sums it up pretty nicely.

Is the 15 year old qualified to build a school in the UK? No. Therefore what makes her qualified to build a school in Kenya. It is the same with people who go to "teach English" for 2-3 weeks somewhere.

I think it is great to raise money. But that money should be donated towards salaries of local carpenters, who in turn can then buy food from local farmers, who can then pay school fees for their kids etc. It is a much better and sustainable method of development and support.

By all means, if she wants to go to Kenya, she should go, and spend money locally, but the hubris is pretty bad. If a 15 year old showed up at your job, and offered to do it for free, and took away your business, you would not be happy.