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?

A woman, I absolutely despise was all into this so maybe it’s unfairly influenced my view. I did ask her why not send the money that your dad gives you for flights and accommodation to the charity?

I've refused to participate when I discovered that a charity bake sale was really so the individual could send her private school son to Africa to build something.

Voluntourism - YANBU OP.

If you want to go on a holiday, do so, and put money into the local economy that way. But going over to pretend to do something useful and dress your tourism up as charity is indefensible.

I make an exception for people who are actually skilled in the thing they are going to do there. E.g. doctors, people with construction skills etc.. An unskilled and unqualified 18 year old is not going to be able to contribute anything useful.

I once sponsored someone to do a sky dive. After he did it, he said that some of the money was going to pay for the sky dive. If I'd known that, I wouldn't have sponsored him.

YABU. My brother went on one of these trips to India to help at an orphanage, they were basically just manpower, shifting stuff round and digging whilst supervised. We certainly aren’t middle class, very much working class and they spent over a year fundraising for it.

The most sustainable playgrounds are those built by local workers using locally available, low-cost materials.

In the case of urban South Africa, where I worked for a while, that was disused tyres. Given away, because so difficult/expensive to recycle, long-lasting, and could be turned into all sorts of stepping stones, tunnels, and climbing 'things', plus the seats of swings if you put up a frame to swing them on with wooden poles and some rope. Plus the tyres can be used to fence the playground.

Tbh if you donated £100 to a charity doing this sort of thing they'd have change left over after paying for the materials and labour.

Yeah I don’t like these schemes either. These unskilled teens who are so keen to help could go and raise money for their local food bank or litter pick or whatever but that doesn’t sound as exciting does it!

100% agree

Yes, how many local workers could be employed for £2500 - for a week or two?

Probably 4, for at least a month!!

Its astonishingly inefficient to fly unskilled labour from the UK to a developing country.

Voluntourism. Pay for your own gap year and drop the white saviour bullshit.

Two friends went to Uganda to teach young women and girls how to make their own sanitary products. They raised money with various activities. Why is a group of kids building a playground, most likely under supervision, any different?

I am sure the people in Uganda will much prefer the £2500 x how many kids/staff going instead of a shoddy playground built by school kids.

Give them the funds to let their own skilled workforce build for their own future.

I absolutely refuse to pay for someone else's holiday sponsor these programs or similar, such as a colleague who wanted sponsorship to pay for her to go and walk the great wall of china for charity and I have no problem saying exactly why.

You know what would have been better? Going as a genuine tourist and putting money into the local economy, so local workers could have done the work.

Dd had the opportunity to do this and dh and I explained that most of the money that she would have had to work v. hard to raise would be going on flights and accommodation and we too felt that sending all of the money to a good cause was more useful.
I think those that did go spent a week doing some vaguely useful stuff and then had a holiday.
It’s all just middle class kids pimping their cv’s.

The full £2.5k isn't going to build the playground! Once flights and accommodations etc have been paid for, there's not that much left.

(Agreeing with you)

Not to mention its not really charity/altruism to raise a load of money but only give it when you get something ~a holiday~ in return.

It’s a holiday. I’d not pay for someone else’s child to patronise those living in Uganda. Some projects are good and offer sustainable resources but those are usually fundraising efforts to send people with skills that are in short supply locally. Plenty of volunteering opportunities that make a real difference but generally less exciting.
Work experience abroad is beneficial but should be that and paid for by the person going or their family or host.

@EmmaGrundyForPM

Why

Because the Op and thread is full of ignorant sneering posts putting down people trying to do a good thing.

Makes me depressed.

Type "volunteer uganda playground" and you get tons of leads.. It appears to be a "thing"

If I was going to be so outraged about something that I started a thread then I'd probably put a bit of effort in first so I didn't look like a bored gf.
They will not just let unqualified DCs 'build' a playground.
There are lots of benefits including the playground getting funding; establishing cross-continental links; everyone involved gaining more knowledge about a different country.
Whether you sponsor them or not will make no difference but trying to pretend your isolationism is some sort of health and safety crusade is laughable.

That sort of money could make a massive difference to those kids and to local men and women who need the.work. If it was 30 kids raising 2.5k each to improve facilities I'd be much more impressed

My DD1 did something like this in Nicaragua. It was helping to build toilets. They lived and ate with families in the area and shared tasks with the locals. She says it was the single most significant thing she has ever done and that all parties got something out of it. All her friends and family happily sponsored her and she put all birthday and Christmas money towards her trip.

The fact is that if they handed over the airfare and other costs associated with the trip to the school, the school could get local people to build it really quickly. That gives local people a job rather than having to supervise young people who wouldn't be much use at all.

And what skills and experience do your friends have in making their own sanitary products?