To think this is tone deaf and a dreadful use of charitable money?

[fuckthisprivilage]

I live in a very affluent area where most kids are at independent schools.

We have a local WhatsApp group and a teenager has posted offering to do odd jobs to earn money (several thousand pounds) towards paying for a school trip - a month long holiday to an amazing destination under the guise of doing "community work". Now personally I hate this kind of western saviour type shit but whatever, and there is nothing wrong with the kid offering to take on odd jobs to help fund a tiny fraction of it.

What's really boiled my piss is that some trustees of a local charity have now responded and encouraged him to apply for funding from them. WTF?!!! In what world should a charity be sponsoring a privileged child from a hugely privileged background to take a month long holiday that will cost five figures, in the middle of a COL crisis that is seeing families using food banks and kids that will literally NEVER experience even a week by the seaside during their entire childhoods? Surely it should be the responsibility of the parents to pay for this hugely indulgent experience, not a bloody charity?

Presumably the teens are supplying the manpower, and the charity has qualified tradespeople who can oversee the work?

How much 'manpower' do you think you could hire in Tanzania with 3K? Even a tenth of that would keep you in manpower for a significantly longer time than Tarquinius is there. And Tarquinius won't be using his pocket money to feed his kids, pay for seed, buy mosquito nets, or medication or travel to get a vaccine.

He'll go home and tell everyone how travel expanded his mind and go and work for Deutsche Bank.

There is nothing wrong with volunteering abroad if it benefits the local people. I know a woman who has been going to Africa for years to help train safari guides up so they can get jobs and implement wildlife education programmes in schools, the running of which are then taken over by local people. She has skills and experience to enable her to do this and her work is all about empowering local communities, not stealing work from them. And she treats it with as much seriousness as she does her usual 9-5 job. Not just a holiday with some volunteering thrown in. The organisation she works with also runs English classes and Maths/reading/writing etc for local adults who weren't fortunate to go to school. As a native speaker, it is beneficial to have her occasional helping with the English classes.

Yes @Prescottdanni123 there is a difference between a skilled and trained, self-funding volunteer and a teenager.

I've done training for free, at my expense, in something I'm trained in and uniquely qualified to deliver. No one is lumping in Medicins Sans Frontiers with Tarquinius from Cheam.

it's a massive money making racket these days - I'm incredibly anti it -

For those that have asked - yes I do know the family and no, they definitely don't fall into the bursary scholarship camp. Obviously I'm not intimately acquainted with their financial situation but they've got plenty of the outward signals of beihg very comfortable (three children at independent school for starters). They're a perfectly nice family, I don't have any issues with them individually. It's more this ridiculous fiction that is being created by the school, and now encouraged by a charity, that I have a problem with.

I'm not going to share my views with the WhatsApp group with my views because it would come across as a personal attack and that's not my intention. Based on this thread though I can see I'm not alone in how I feel about this so I think I may well take it up directly with the charity.

it will make the charity look good
probably get a tax break
if they agree

money comes to money, if you dont ask you dont get.

@MrsTerryPratchett

My post was more targeted at the people who tar everyone with same brush and think that anyone who volunteers abroad is a white saviour on holiday

I'm scared to say I went on one of these trips based on the tone of these replies 😩 it was in 2008 so a long time ago now. I'm not from a privileged background and neither were the majority of the students who went on the trip from my school. I believe there was 12 of us. We had to raise £3000 each plus spending money, extensive kit etc so close to £4k. A lot of money when you're 17!
I genuinely believe we helped the communities we worked with whilst we were out there. I'm not saying we solved everything, of course not! But the help we were practically able to offer was very well received.
I raised all of the money by myself (as did most of the other participants) and it really helped me gain some entrepreneurial experience I still use today with my business. The same one I started back then. I didn't really have a clue about money beforehand because money was a taboo subject in my house.
It's cliché to say, of course, but I genuinely did grow as a young person. My confidence was zero beforehand but I really did grow up and it helped me immensely with the next few years of my life in particular.
Is it not a good thing that this young person is trying at least? He's hoping to earn the money it seems. Hopefully he'll learn something and be able to offer a little something to the community he visits too. Best of luck to him.

My DS did Camp International in Borneo so I presume this is the kind of thing you are referring to.
He cleared beaches and built temporary classrooms from beach debris for 6 weeks. All non-skilled but useful work.
He did apply to our village educational fund and was awarded £100 from them. This fund is very underused and it was only bcos I am on the PCC that I heard about it. Since then I have made sure the profile of the fund - set up in 1904- is raised. The whole application process was useful to him. The trip was £4000 which he raised from working at a tennis camp in holidays and weekends. I would not let him ask for sponsorship type events as it seemed indulgent and friends funds could go to better use. He did sell some of his gaming bits.
The CI experience equipped him to make an informed uni/career choice. I do not regret DS taking part.

What makes you think he’s going with a charity? Most of these trips are with commercial companies who do it to make money. So long as the clients keep bringing in the cash, they don’t care how badly they screw over the locals.

As for ‘being happy to accept the project’, please see the thread I’ve linked where people who know a lot about the subject have explained the difference between actual help (qualified people doing something the locals can’t and usually staying for a couple of years) and this sort of voluntourism which most charities won’t touch with a barge pole. There are also multiple links to magazine articles and I think at least one academic paper.

Basically, the charity the OP mentions is offering to give money to a commercial business to benefit a well off private school teenager at the expense of the locals. Very charitable (not).

On the contrary. It's from an incredibly informed viewpoint.

There is plenty written about the harm of this kind of "charity" if you care to educate yourself.

Exactly this

If you think it’s a luxury holiday why don’t you apply for the funding and go over to shitsville and build the primary school? A lovely free holiday.

thought not.

YANBU
Years ago, a friend wanted to climb Kilimanjaro (as an adult) and needed to raise £x thousand. It wasn’t for charity. She asked everyone I knew to sponsor her. I declined. If she wanted to climb Kilimanjaro, and have an amazing experience, my view was there was absolutely no way anyone other than her should fund it.
Not exactly the same, but similar.

I don't think it's a luxury holiday. I don't think it's benefiting the people in Tanzania more than it's benefiting the teenagers who are building the 'primary school'.

Since I appear to have found my people, can I suggest that instead of funding nonsense, look for local, cost-effective non-profits in the majority world who do good. My favourites are:

The Fistula Foundation. Who repair birth injuries returning women to their families in good health. https://fistulafoundation.org/what-we-do/our-strategy/ and

The Against Malaria Foundation. https://www.againstmalaria.com/ Giving nets incredibly cheaply, saving some of the more than 1/2 a million people who die each year. Many being under 5 years old.

They both post excellent financials.

MumblesParty · Today 18:31
CovertImage · Today 17:44

White cringe in action is a lovely thing to watch. Keep it coming.
@CovertImage what is white cringe?

I wondered that. Is it white people behaving in a cringe worthy way?

Because it's wrong.

When I want a holiday in a majority world place I do the following:

Pay for it myself
Buy local. That means accommodation, tours, language learning and supplies
Try to travel as 'light' as possible
Learn as much about the local culture as possible before I go

I don't pretend to care when my rucksack costs more than the per capita GDP.

Well I try and avoid deliberate racist exploitation whenever possible so no, I won’t be doing anything of the sort.

I'm with you OP.

Yes I highly suspect it’s one of these. The trustees are probably thrilled that they’ve finally found someone who meets the incredibly narrow requirements of the fund, can pay out the last of the cash and wind the whole thing up.

Most teenagers (especially the ones most likely to go on this type of trip) would have zero experience or qualification of building work, so I'm skeptical who benefits the most from their help

Agree these things are complete croc of rubbish, surely it would help the communities much more to be employing locals to do the work at fair rates

Pretty unpleasant way to describe other countries

Also, no one is saying these trips don’t massively benefit Tarquinius from Cheam who thinks poverty is only having one ski trip a year. The issue is whether benefiting Tarquinius (and Jacinta and all the other well off teenagers) justifies the damage done by voluntourism in the country he travels to. Most experts and many people on this thread think not