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?

How do you know the community centre is a good thing for the community?

The same with playgrounds. Do you think children don't play if they don't have a 'Western' type playground? Why is building a 'playground' an asset to the community? What are your assumptions about that?

it was being designed as a pre school education centre for children under 5. It was also to have rooms for doctor visits, holding vaccination clinics etc for the local community because it was so rural and so poor they are miles and miles away from hospitals etc.

thank you all for your rude comments on this thread because you have all made me go and look up our project. The centre is up and running it was one of the only things around to withstand nepals horrendous earthquakes a number of years ago. The Facebook page shows pictures of children utilising the centre, learning, eating meals. One day they had a doctor come in and do a gyne clinic and he assessed 15 mothers and grandmothers from the local community. it’s called the Meera Centre. Ah yes. Awful thing we have done.

Just imagine what they could have built if most of the money raised hadn’t been wasted on shipping in untrained labour from across the world to do jobs that could have been done by paid locals.

But as long as you get to feel virtuous, I guess.

I'm glad you checked all that out before deciding to fund it. Although you could perhaps have done more for the money if you hadn't, as the PP pointed out, shipped in the expensive untrained labour?

What was the business case?

This! Perfect response to a stupid smug post!

This

Our friend was a fully trained civil engineer on VSO and the West Africans humoured him and laughed at his suggestions. The idea of white middle-class families asking their work mates to chip in to fund trips for their offspring to go to developing countries to ostensibly boost their own white privilege is obscene. And at the same time so typical.

Ah yes, but it makes for a wonderful Instagram feature.

I'd like to contribute to your cultural exchange. My brother was, like I was, born in Yorkshire and transplanted to Lancashire where our parents were working as missionaries instructing the locals how to make a proper Yorkshire pudding.

My brother moved to Cornwall 30+ years ago. He married a woman from Devon and between them they have raised 3 dual heritage children.

I feel your cultural exchange could be improved by the exotic creature that is my brother. He is retired now, but was accepted into the police when height regulations were abolished in order to encourage more ethnic minorities into the police.

As he was, for a time, a custody sergeant in the main party town in Cornwall he has had a lot of experience with teenagers from 'up country'.

Naturally, although DD has no idea about the correct sequence of cream/jam, she will happily instruct the local small children in the subject.

No money was wasted “shipping in labour” because we paid for our trip ourselves. Yes my post is smug because our centre is doing very good work and benefiting the local community despite what people on this thread would have you believe.

Don't be so bloody miserable.

But the point is you could have donated the cost of the flights. So much money spent to fly across the world so you could feel good about yourself when the work could easily have been done by locals for wages that would easily have been covered by the flight costs with masses left over to actually benefit the community.

It looks like in your case the centre is actually useful. That’s great. However, I still don’t see why it required unskilled Westerners to build it. If you are saying the money couldn’t have been raised without letting the people raising it go out on a white saviour jolly, then that just illustrates it’s all about the benefit to the voluntourists and the locals benefit as a side effect if they are lucky.

You haven’t answered @Sigma33’s question about the business case for importing unskilled labour. If this is the rare example where there is such a business case, please let us know what it is. It may be something other companies/charities can utilise to prevent voluntourists trips being so damaging.

@sashh your brother sounds suitably experienced complete with safeguarding checks and balances therefore we will have to turn down your offer because he might expose what a stupid but lucrative money making plan I've got going on. (But your family sounds ace! See you on the beach for Xmas day swim)

@Sigma33 's DD is definitely in. No experience? No knowledge? She sounds just the monied naive young thing we're looking for. (Please make sure she brings the money as well as the jam and cream)

The only thing these trips do apart from rearranging truck tyres in the desert is give these young adults a ton of confidence and bullshit.

As mentioned up thread, no academic or university admissions officer seeing these trips on a Personal Statement will like your kid for them. In fact for competitive courses it will count against your children for all the ethical points raised.
For example on medicine, London medical schools want to be sure your kid can hack stressful years in an underfunded system and that they know what the coal face looks like.
Working in a local UK care home would score maximum points. There are no points for an 18 year old badly demonstrating sew your own pads to African adult women who make their own clothes.

African academics are running some excellent projects establishing real centres of excellence and cooperation. A compound is normally funded, then built by locals. You would never bring a load of stupid European teens in, it would cause distrust, totally undermine the future.

And back to my FICTIONAL Cornish camp, pre Covid, we had a group of visiting actual academics working in London visit. They had a great time, some from China had never been in the sea, the south Americans ate scones. They played volleyball with my kids. I taught a few how to split firewood and we stacked a bays worth - much appreciated but the whole point of the visit was their enjoyment.
My kids wouldn't want a different group week in week out. I don't need more than three bays of firewood. Taking them to the beach becomes a chore. Organising three meals plus snacks and entertainment was enough for a long weekend. And the washing and the camping equipment we borrowed and the rubbish disposal and loo roll and showers......

And that is why we all need to rethink these trips and say no more.

Aren't you a mean minded woman

@Thisisashitshow what a feeble response to a thread with 590 posts. Do better.

What part of the analysis of the damage done by these sorts of trips do you disagree with?

If they REALLY wanted to help, they'd raise money and have an experienced contractor take it there, buy local materials, hire locals, train and pay them to do the work. This is to feel like we're doing good and getting good marks on our life's report.

Thank you for this thread. It's really made me think more about these scemes often promoted by schools etc. I always felt it didnt make sense with so much spent on flights to get there and wondered how much local people were involved. For various reasons my DC never went and I thought they had maybe missed out.

It is good to see how the ethics of this are being explored here and how we can learn from others' experiences.
Wo t be sponsoring again after this either!

Both mine did eco-versions of these with wildlife charities in South America. They didn't bother with all the sponsership faffage - they just got jobs. Boom - holiday paid for, fewer plastic bottles round lake Titikaka, local markets sell more llama related gubbins and a good time had by all. Definitely a jollyc, though, and the locals could definitely pick up their own bottles if they were bothered enough.
I do agree about the orphanages and the building things and the white saviour stuff, but the wildlife groups rely on starry eyed western youths who pay their own flights and food and work for nothing as they make money off them to fund their long term programmes and they do jobs the charities can't afford to pay locals to do. The locals make a fair wack off them too, so everyone wins.
Definitely a holiday with a bit of light litter picking and a series of humiliating defeats at beach vollyball from the local WI thrown in, though.

the locals could definitely pick up their own bottles if they were bothered enough

Wow

@Comedycook Ah, sorry! That came out all wrong. Shouldn't try to type and cook at the same time. By which l mean if the locals weren't busy doing 101 more important things. Not that they need skinny white boys to show them the way to keep things clean, just it was useful busy-work for the charity to get them doing while they weren't hiking and swimming that didn't rob anyone local of paid employment.
I'm actually agreeing with the OP, just very badly wordidly - l'll get my coat.

Surely there is plenty of unskilled labour available in Africa, and you could probably pay them for a year out of what the flight would cost. Therefore… a job for a local who can feed their kids, maybe even send them to school. The kids don’t need to go begging because there is an income in the family, and can therefore actually use the playground.
otherwise… airline is happy they sold a ticket. Teenager is happy because they are doing some good, because clearly locals don’t want to help themselves. Company is happy they make money.
unskilled labourer can’t find a job, can’t afford to send his kids to school, kids need to go begging and do pictures with teenager.
which one is the better outcome for the labourer and their family?

Neither Bahrain nor Botswana are in the EU…

Sorry @Nevermind31 that sentence could have been clearer.
The knee jerk education & visa policies of the last 12years under the Conservative Government have diminished the appeal of the UK to high achieving students across the globe.
The disastrous effect of Brexit on Universities is recognised. Many UK research institutes are no longer eligible to act as PIs (Primary Investigators) with European partners, losing knowledge & funding.
The decision to stop the long running successful Erasmus programme has taken opportunities from this generation within Europe.
The kneejerk, cut immigration, Conservative policy has lost us amazing students from places like Bahrain & Botswana.
The figures are currently distorted by Hong Kong and Ukraine visas being double accounted.

So, shame Brexit and the clamp down on educational visas has made this kind of cultural exchange harder.