If you think students spend all their spare time avoiding studying, going out with their mates and having a good time then you'd be right. Well our student bloggers do anyway. While they assure us they don't slack on the study, they've got a lot to answer for when it comes to enjoying themselves while volunteering.

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Tuesday Aug 21, 2007

Guilt Trip and partnerships

Hello,

Yesterday I accepted a seemingly innocent invitation to go and visit an orphanage in a village outside the town we are staying in.  After a bus journey and lengthy cycle I came to the village with my giude (the head of the orphanage) to find that infact no orphange existed.  Ahhhhh 'but there are plans, mister Tom'  the orphanage head said..'there are plans'. What there was was an open space, with a few bricks strewn about.  'But Mister Tom we cannot make the orphange without money'.  It quickly  became apparent that this was the aim of taking me to see the site of the proposed orphanage.  I lunched with this mans family (all used to white people, as the head of the orphanage said he brings westerners often) and everyone was very polite.  Was this a scam?  Was i right to feel a bit put out?  The head (Charles was his name, well charles to his friends, but insisted on being known as Prince Charles to people who just knew him) was very nice to me, and his company meant I could venture to a village I wouldn't have otherwise.  But the fact is I'm am already here doing charity work and that he knew this made it feel like a bit much.  The trip he took me on was a very slick operation, designed ( i felt) to persuade me into donating money. 

What exactely the money would go on was unclear.  For me, vague notions of an orphanage are not enough.  Much better the sort of planned development, working in partnership with local people that READ international promotes.  Later Charles took us to a secondary school, perhaps thinking that we could donate this school books as this is what our charity does.  However the region the school was in is not one high on the priority list READ works on.  This priority list is given to us by the Tanzanian Ministry of Education and the partnership READ has with them is extremely important to its ethos as a charity.  Without this partnership, our work would not only be much less useful but conform to the old stereotype of western aid swooping in to make everything right again.  The bare fact is that we have no clue what is best for the poeple here, which schools and which districts need books the most.  We can make a judgement but it is based on a very shallow interpretation of what little knowledge we have.

READ recognises this.  As a student charity, it could raise money all year for 'Princes Charles Orphanage'.  Behaps we could drop in a few comments about how aids is robbing tanzanian children of their parents.  Perhaps, just perhaps this would be a more attractive propisition for the people we stop on the street and ask for money than raising money to send textbooks is.  However it would not be right.  With READ'S empathsis on us volunteers working with the local people, and aiding national policy, we can perhaps give a part of a generation of Tanzanian's the skills to help themselves.  Charles wanted me to do everything for him.  He wanted me to give him money, and on hearing I couldnt, he wanted me to apply for him to interanational charities.  By doing this I would not be empowering or developing.  I would be giving money to a man, with a vague plan, and with no guarentee it would be spent on what he said. 

When people give to READ, or support it in any way, they can be sure they are giving to a charity that is not only accountable to the west's vigarous charity laws but also accountable to Tazanians.  We ensure this by working in partnerships, and by going to local people with a plan and seeing how they want to work it.  Empowerment, development, call it what you want.  But to me, asking local people what they want us to do for them is just common sense.

Tom G

Posted by Tom G ( 1:19 PM )
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