Not Because they easy, but because they are hard.
I'm two hours into a bout of insomnia.
About a decade ago someone tried to upstage my father, the details aren't important, and in the end they ended up with rather a lot of egg on their face. Amongst it all was a comment that they worked for a major charity, and were so good at their job with that charity that they had been round the world first class.
This bugged me when I heard about it, and it still does. If you're being paid the market rate for the work you do, and getting the market perks, then I don't see what virtue you are anointed with by having a charity as your employer.
It struck me, that somewhere there is an entire street of charity shops, all run by volunteers, all handling donated goods and funds, just to keep this person well paid and pampered.
We live in times where compassion and commitment are commoditised, quite literally the professional fundraisers that accost me every couple of months stay the same, but have a different vest and are from a different charity every time they ask. (Yes, I know the media likes to call them "Chuggers", I know that the input to the client charity is incredibly inefficient, that's not my point.)
A lot of the volunteer hours I do are tedious, on standby, chasing up paperwork, planning activities. These aren't the only hours the organisation has to offer, but there's an agreement that it's bad form to do too many of the duties that amount to lolling around at somewhere that everyone else paid to get in to.
And the thought rattling around my head is this: What's so bloody noble about sponsored treks?
For two grand you can do pretty much anything, walk along the great wall of China, follow the Inca trail, cycle across Australia, visit Base Camp on Everest. All of these are very hard work, but the fact that you can pretty much buy the trip off-the-shelf testifies that people do these things for self enrichment, because these things are hard. So why the sponsorship?
The volunteer isn't performing an arduous task for the good of the community, so much as doing something they want to, and under the guise of charity, getting the tab picked up for them. Impressive feat? Perhaps, but selfless and noble? No.
I did a sponsored parachute jump once, for the very worst reason: I wanted something to put on my UCAS form.
A few years ago I did a sponsored walk across London, after 20 miles in the wrong shoes it took a day before I could walk properly again, the organiser worked it in with an open house, we rode on the London Eye, saw a light show at Battersea power station, visited a cancer care centre, looked around the Channel 4 building... People pay good money to go on that kind of tour!
And don't get me started on sponsored slims.
I'm wondering what would have happened if twenty five years ago Linus Torvalds had circulated a sponsorship form. "Please sponsor me to sit in front of a computer for a few thousand hours working on something called a `kernel`."
About a decade ago someone tried to upstage my father, the details aren't important, and in the end they ended up with rather a lot of egg on their face. Amongst it all was a comment that they worked for a major charity, and were so good at their job with that charity that they had been round the world first class.
This bugged me when I heard about it, and it still does. If you're being paid the market rate for the work you do, and getting the market perks, then I don't see what virtue you are anointed with by having a charity as your employer.
It struck me, that somewhere there is an entire street of charity shops, all run by volunteers, all handling donated goods and funds, just to keep this person well paid and pampered.
We live in times where compassion and commitment are commoditised, quite literally the professional fundraisers that accost me every couple of months stay the same, but have a different vest and are from a different charity every time they ask. (Yes, I know the media likes to call them "Chuggers", I know that the input to the client charity is incredibly inefficient, that's not my point.)
A lot of the volunteer hours I do are tedious, on standby, chasing up paperwork, planning activities. These aren't the only hours the organisation has to offer, but there's an agreement that it's bad form to do too many of the duties that amount to lolling around at somewhere that everyone else paid to get in to.
And the thought rattling around my head is this: What's so bloody noble about sponsored treks?
For two grand you can do pretty much anything, walk along the great wall of China, follow the Inca trail, cycle across Australia, visit Base Camp on Everest. All of these are very hard work, but the fact that you can pretty much buy the trip off-the-shelf testifies that people do these things for self enrichment, because these things are hard. So why the sponsorship?
The volunteer isn't performing an arduous task for the good of the community, so much as doing something they want to, and under the guise of charity, getting the tab picked up for them. Impressive feat? Perhaps, but selfless and noble? No.
I did a sponsored parachute jump once, for the very worst reason: I wanted something to put on my UCAS form.
A few years ago I did a sponsored walk across London, after 20 miles in the wrong shoes it took a day before I could walk properly again, the organiser worked it in with an open house, we rode on the London Eye, saw a light show at Battersea power station, visited a cancer care centre, looked around the Channel 4 building... People pay good money to go on that kind of tour!
And don't get me started on sponsored slims.
I'm wondering what would have happened if twenty five years ago Linus Torvalds had circulated a sponsorship form. "Please sponsor me to sit in front of a computer for a few thousand hours working on something called a `kernel`."