Jeffrey’s Journey

Below is an e-mail sent at a moment of inspiration from a friend’s volunteer trip to India. I know ideas mean nothing if there are no actions.. David is already on board with the idea, anyone else? We can make this work, if we are willing to make it part of our plans.

date Jul 1, 2007 9:06 AM subject The School of Fishing mailed-by gmail.com

hide details Jul 1

Reply

Yo Kit!

Hi! How are you doing over there!!!??? You are so awesome for what you
are doing. I completely get the picture/writing about what you see
dilemma. But I truly believe you are not exploiting them if you wrote
about it because you are shedding light on the lives of people who
need help, and in doing so you are creating awareness and
understanding. Without people that share their experiences, no matter
how poor and heartbreaking, it wouldn’t be possible for the word to
spread for a particular cause. I think awareness and understanding is
probably the single biggest difference one can make. That’s why you
are awesome.

I was actually inspired by what you are doing there. I was picturing
you working at the slums and what it must be like; shacks and huts
made of garbage, limited opportunities, and cute little children
without the bare necessities. This also made me think of Cambodia, and
how cute the children were, but how limited real opportunities
existed. Then, I started to comb through blogs and travel threads,
reading about how there are so many gappers and people who are going
on a holiday that want to make a difference. They want to volunteer
their time, people who have whole and good intentions. But the problem
many of them have is that many organizations charge these people a lot
of money, thousands of dollars, just to volunteer their time.

So that gave me the idea: The School of Fishing. We can set up a school.

Many of the travelers who want to go on a working holiday or gap year
are from English speaking countries. We will take these travelers, and
for whatever time they can volunteer, we can set up a small school and
they can stay at the school for free. The goal of this school is to
give the travelers who want to do more than just skim the surface of a
culture by giving back to the community to teach the children English.
They will be a part of a community through volunteering their time by
teaching English. But not just teach them English, but teach them how
to be tour guides to other tourists around their city.

For a small fee, the children can be tour guides, speak of monuments
and tourist attractions, and a little bit about their lives. The idea
is to give these children a way to sustain themselves and at the same
time providing a skill that may lead to other opportunities later
through the vehicle of learning English and working as tour guides.
Many of the children I saw in Cambodia were so smart and cute, but I
think the opportunities were so limited there and that’s why there
were so many children begging, stealing, and later on prostituting
themselves. Hopefully, the idea of the school will help prevent some
of that from happening.

I think the tourist that hire these children to be their part time
tour guides will also get an enriching and educational experience by
having a glimpse of how life really is like for a child in (fill in
the blank with a developing country). I think this can potentially be
a win win for everyone, because we are not charging the travelers
thousands of dollars to volunteer but providing them with a chance to
make a difference still, providing the local children an opportunity
to better their lives, and providing the tourists a more enriching
experience.

Of course, there’s more to think through with money and figures and
ultimately finding a way to help sustain an organization such as this.
Maybe we can ask for donations from the travelers who come work with
us, maybe we can get grants, I don’t know. But I believe this can be
done.

When I had this idea, I immediately told Mike about it, but I also
wanted to tell you because I feel you totally get this, and you can
probably contribute another perspective from all your experiences
abroad. The School of Fishing.

What do you think?

Let me know how are you are doing Kit!

Jeff.