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?

As someone who is actually from one of the countries that gets the ‘voluntours’, I just have to say that I’m really genuinely heartened by most of the attitudes on this thread.

I was very worried as to how it would go (as it could easily have degenerated into a reactionary coded racist cesspit), so I’m honestly delighted that most of you ‘get it’ and lots of those that didn’t at the beginning read the thread, thought about it and changed their minds. I love MN, sometimes.

That video shared by a previous poster is very eye-opening, where the girl mentions that a fellow volunteer on her trip encouraged a teenage ‘orphan’ questioning their sexuality to be open and be themselves, despite the fact that doing so would put her at great risk of sexual assault, mutilation, prison or murder. Doesn’t surprise me at all.

😂😂😂

It’s never too early in the week for wine! Missing wine is now the entirety of my MN persona, so I hope you enjoy it!

Wow do they still do these weird voluntourism white saviour type trips? It always looks so cringy and awful

I did one of these trips when I was in school and honestly it changed my life but...

The volunteering bit of it was absolute rubbish. A real waste of everyone's time and It would have been much better to pay locals.

The rest of it was amazing- trekking and camping etc. all the skills that you'd get from DOE with the added benefit of experiencing a new culture.

I think the only reason why they add the volunteering is so they can fundraiser for the over priced trips. I remember feeling a bit embarrassed about that part at the time to be honest and in the end I paid for most of mine with a combination of my Saturday job and a side business I set up.

It has directly contributed to me working in the area I do now as it gave me the travel bug and the confidence to do other projects abroad.

In terms of it it helps on CV/uni apps. I have worked in uni admissions and of course you can tell a lot about a students background and the opportunities they have had access to through their personal statement but what really matters is how they talk about it. We are looking for what they have gained/learned and it's relevance to the programme etc not just what they have done.

There's a section on orphanages and unskilled volunteers in the documentary, The Last Tourist. A couple assumed they were "doing good," but realized how naive they'd been and what harmed they'd unknowingly caused by engaging in one of these volunteer trips.

thelasttouristfilm.com/

There's no way on earth I would ever contribute to somebody else's glorified holiday.

Please, if you have relevant skills and are at a point in your life when you can take time out, consider whether you could use those skills in a part of the world where those skills are scarce. It will probably be for a year or two, as you will need to gain some understanding of the local culture and develop relationships.

If you have something to offer you will be able to find an organisation like VSO that will place you where you can have a long term benefit, and will pay you enough to live on.

Living and working in the non-profit sector changed my life - it changed me. I ended up staying in SA for 12 years, and adopting my daughters there.It was the most wonderful and most difficult thing I have ever done. It took some of the years that would have been most profitable in the UK in terms of career development and earning potential. It challenged my beliefs, my mental health and - at times - my self-confidence.

I wouldn't change it for anything! You don't have to go as far as I did 😂you can do a year or two and leave again!

We have volunteering days at work where we completely inexperienced office folk did gardening, put up a fence and built some benches for a MS centre! It’s what volunteering is, you volunteer your time to do things. I’m sure if the place we volunteered at needed playground things being put together we’d have got involved with that.

Big cultural assumption here that whatever the women had been doing for generations should be replaced by naice washable pads which could only be taught by cv building British teenagers, so skilled that they themselves needed supervision to teach sewing in case they got it wrong?

Even the example upthread of the trained musician teaching music which sounds ok, but were they teaching these youngsters about their own cultural musical heritage, or were they teaching the music of western Europe?

So far none of the examples on this thread sound better than sending the cash to help poor communities do their own projects.

It has directly contributed to me working in the area I do now as it gave me the travel bug and the confidence to do other projects abroad.

I got that from working on a summer camp in the USA, so I do get how being exposed to a different culture and being pushed out of your comfort zone is a positive.

But as you have recognised, that is separate from the false 'doing good' add on to an adventurous holiday

Totally agree. I already work in the voluntary sector and I’m west African, and split my time between the U.K. and my native country. So, I’m probably not the target audience for this, but I co-sign all of this.

Well...duh, we live in a 1st world country

You’re not being unreadable. This is actually a big big problem in africa. Teenagers in churches getting sent over to build schools and houses and just creating a big mess for the local people to clean up when they go back. While destroying their self esteem so that the teens can get feel good pictures for their social media and get an ego boost.

Many of the houses, schools and wells that they build to help are built very poorly. Often the local people know this but are often blamed when they fall apart.

The wells shouldn’t even be built because the ground cannot sustain them.

Only donate to organizations that actually talk to the local people and make plans with them. Do not donate to organizations that just decide “this is what we’ve decided they need so we are building it!” donate to organizations that say “hey the people in this area are asking for xy and z and have asked us to do it in this specific way so we’re saving up to make it happen and we are gunna work together to do it. We need experienced hands.”

Thank you, I realise I am on shaky ground advocating this as I am not from a country that looks for skilled volunteers (we just buy and add to the brain drain instead)

I did this in a Romanian orphanage. Late 90s. Wouldn't do it now in Uganda- it's not ethically appropriate, nor even good on a CV for a young person as it smacks of middle class holiday, and for all the reasons already stated above.

There's volunteer opportunities overseas that aren't taking advantage like this.

E.g would be psychologists working as mental health care assistants for three months in the developing world.

With yet more 'austerity' there will be far less money to maintain playgrounds here, let alone build new ones.

Yes, any project that has strict criteria on the skills and experience needed is a good sign.

They wouldn't volunteer for such things if they were not fairly good all rounders.. Experienced people are there to help and guide, they are not just left to get on with it.

It's good to do things for others and the youngsters do all sorts of things to raise money to finance it all.

Why worry about what other young people do, it's nobody else's business as long as no harm done. I'd also like to know what is wrong with being middle class; it's just the way some of us are.

I doubt 3 months would be enough to understand the culture and how that affects perceptions and treatment of 'mental health'

A surgeon teaching a specific technique, maybe. But I think those schemes tend to be done virtually these days, surgeons training other surgeons remotely etc

They won’t be doing it alone. World Challenge uses experienced people alongside volunteers. Yabu. It’s a hell of an experience for young people, lots of hard work and quite humbling. Yes, it looks good on their cvs but is well deserved.

As so many people here have explained, it does cause harm

Ugh 😢yes!!!