Dilemma: To give or not to give that is the question

[Margarita Ma]

Yes you are right in many ways about the level of corruption in Africa.

 

I have done aid work in Kibera slum, Nairobi and we had to battle it everyday, people offering 'protection' and so on. Thankfully we had the local 'chief' on side.

 

However, we took our own fundraising money, we hired locals to assist with the labouring, we hired a local architect who grew up in Kibera so knew how things worked, we worked with another school from a different part of Kibera to recruit teachers who again grew up in Kibera, we put in place legal electricity and setup a 'pay per use' charging scheme to generate some income for the school, we also put in place a Wi-Fi network and again set that up so tokens for it's use could be sold, finally we negotiated with the local 'chief' (read head of the militia here) to say to him that if he gave us safe passage for free he'd be able to gain favour with the locals as they would have a new, free to use school in his district...and so on. As a result there is now a school in Kibera that offers a reasonable level of education for free to all children who live in the local area, it's self-sufficient as well, earning enough from selling Wi-Fi and power to just about make ends meet.

 

So enough of the rubbish being spouted from people who seem to just want an excuse to do nothing. If you want to contribute and help then find projects like that where every penny gets to the people who need it, there is no 'creaming' off of the funds (all of us who went paid for all our own accommodation, travel and food etc.)

 

That was a really great project you worked on there. The sort of thing that really needs to be done and deserves recognition.

 

---------- Post added 17-01-2017 at 21:14 ----------

 

So try this for size... you have ten volunteers. you put them on the high volume sites. But volunteers are generally pensioners, and they feel the cold so they stand in doorways and don't get as much trade... ior they keep popping off to the loo...

 

But they collect. So then you find you can say staff five supermarket entrances... but that means you lose five in the town centre as you have no volunteers...

 

So you can pay five people commission to rattle a can, and collect 70% of the total, or you can collect nothing.

 

So tell me what is best. In terms of raising money?

 

To rattle a can in the city centre you need Licence from the city council. this did not cost anything when I took children Carol Singing to raise funds for a Special Care Baby Unit at the Northern General Hospital Many years ago. But and its a big but there are many applications to do can rattling in the city centre and the council controls the numbers carefully to try to minimise problems for people moving around the centre. To do it on private property there is no, licence needed and many supermarkets especially welcome charities bag packing projects with a donation bucket.