to refuse to sponsor this young person

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

An acquaintance has sent out a mass message asking people she knows to sponsor her son to do a 10k run in the New Year.
Son is 17, Y13, and next summer is going to Uganda to build a playground in a primary school. He's raising funding for this with a target of £2500.

AIBU to think that, if the tables were turned, we wouldn't accept this? If I was told that a group of young people, with no experience, were coming to install playground equipment in my child's primary school, I would be outraged. As would other parents. And yet children in less wealthy countries are expected to be grateful for inexperienced people pitching up at their school.

When DS was in 6th form, there was an "opportunity" to go to Malawi for two weeks and volunteer in a school. I told DS I wouldn't support this, and he didn't go.

Why do schools and colleges run these trips, supposedly to "help" less fortunate children, when in fact it tends to be middle class children who go, because it looks good on their CV.

AIBU?

I’m sure it was great for your daughter. However, most commenters on this thread are more concerned by whether it’s great for the communities in which these young people volunteer. And it’s not. It’s not great for them, at all.

It’s cobblers so people can have selfies with the locals and write what excellent work they are doing on Facebook. Total nonsense. Half the time they build crap where people are starving for half the year and money would be better spent elsewhere

You seem like you’re just trying to get validation for your decision not to sponsor him. It’s your personal decision whether you sponsor him, literally no one on here gives a shit whether you do or not.

The whole point of volunteering should be that the community/organisation/animals you help benefit more than you do.

If the pendulum swings the other way, they are doing you a favour and not the other way round. And you really need to ask yourself if it's acceptable for people living in poverty and/or developing countries should be doing that for you.

On the middle class point - the issue is that these trips cost ££££. And (I can't believe I'm having to spell this out but I will) it's typically much easier for middle class children to raise a couple of grand from friends and family because they have more disposable income.

I’m getting this from global charities I’ve worked for rather than nonsense I’ve read in the guardian.

of course every volunteer abroad program is not well run.
That doesn’t mean that volunteering abroad is a bad thing.

I also volunteered both at home and abroad with a global charity. It was an excellent experience for me and beneficial for the country I visited too.

as for all the white savior nonsense- im not white but if I was it’s irrelevant. Something of practical use like a playground is of far more use in the developing world than some patronizing crap in the guardian.

@saraclara

If you find a registered charity that answers to auditors, the money tends to get to where it needs to go. They risk getting closed down if they don't spend it entirely how they say they will

YANBU.

This.

They’re paying for the experience though. That’s the point. And it raises money to actually build the playground, etc.

I don’t donate to this sort of fundraising for two reasons

1. if you want to do a voluntouring trip, I think it should be self-funded

2. the runs or rides where people need to raise donations, the donations are never actually dependent upon the person completing the event if you read the fine print. Plus, most of the time it is for a hobby the person takes part in anyway. I really think they should be stumping up the money for the donation themselves.

Thanks for posting this @IMissVino . I'd been searching for it in between posting

theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/13/the-business-of-voluntourism-do-western-do-gooders-actually-do-harm

Yes

Thread has 232 replies, so quite few people seem to give a shit about whether the OP sponsors him.

Of course. But the volunteering holiday companies that target schools are not registered charities

This - the companies are careful to make sure the voluntourists enjoy themelves and feel they are making a difference - bad reviews might impact the flow of cash clients.

They just don’t give a damn about the distraught children in orphanages who are left with massive attachment issues or the labourers living on the edge of poverty who lose their jobs to unpaid volunteers and can’t feed their families or all the other locals who suffer from this model of tourism.

I fucking despise these trips. Over here, rightly so, an unqualified person can’t teach kids or do construction projects. Huge safeguarding issue. But apparently African kids are fair game. 18 year old privately edcuated brat Myles wants an ‘eggsperiunsss’ funded by others (rather than getting a job to pay for it himself), so he MUST be the priority. These kids can be his lab rats! Brilliant! Or Olivia will come back from her trip and on her uni personal statement she’ll talk about how inspired she was seeing a kid die from malaria.

"I'm getting this from the global charities I work from" and who presumably rely on this kind of thing for a lot of their financing?
Also, a playground may or may not be useful but that isn't really the point - that money would be much better spent paying a local to build it than flying over a spoilt teenager.

@IMissVino

You have read some newspaper articles about some dodgy organisations. They are not all like that. Please don't paint them all with the same brush.

you think they are too dumb to have figured out down the generations how to use needle and thread? I bet they have a new group of earnest faced white saviours coming to teach them every week and tolerate it for a small rake off.

One of those links is a peer reviewed academic paper, but feel free to dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into your narrative.

Please provide links to recognised global charities currently promoting volunteering abroad programmes for young people. A report demonstrating aims, objectives and positive outcomes for the local communities would be great. As you’re so well versed in the subject, this should be easy for you.

As someone who is African and works for a global charity, I’m all agog to see what resources you produce on the subject.

Early starts and long days - for your own benefit. Not for any long-term benefit of the host community.

£2,500 (to use the OP's example) would go a long way to making a life long impact through, for example, the scholarships provided by this organisation saili.org.za/website/scholarships/scholarships-overview/ which genuinely transform lives, and ultimately families and communities.

I would encourage anyone looking to raise £2,500 for the benefit of 'poor people in Africa' to work long hours here in the UK raising money to donate to this or similar organisations.

Of course you are under no circumstances obligation to sponsor anyone and yes there are significant issues with volunteer-tourism.

HOWEVER it is possible for these things to be done well so I wouldn’t have written off your son’s project as quickly as you did - particularly as he would have the benefit of your critical judgement and come to it with a a different perspective from his peers. I did a two week trip to Malawi with school (run by a teacher with a long standing and meaningful relation with the country and schools there. It sparked a serious interest which guided my university studies and I am about to start a Masters in global public health. Just another perspective!

One of those links is a peer reviewed academic paper, but feel free to dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into your narrative.

Please provide links to any recognised global charities currently promoting volunteering abroad programmes for young people. A report demonstrating aims, objectives and positive outcomes for the local communities would be great.

Yup.