It would be nice to see something where a need was posted by governments and people from different parts of the world could sign up for that initiative. I personally have teaching skills and blacksmithing skills and would love to teach that abroad to common folk who have a real desire to learn that trade but are unable to afford a formal training environment.
I think you are proposing a kind of matchmaking system for volunteer teachers and students, or maybe a coordination website/institution for the same.
The challenge is that this system (jargon: “two sided marketplace”) is hard to execute.
The root issue is that there needs to be value for the students and teachers. But teachers are volunteers, commitment and quality requirements are deceptively high and require a lot of support, and so match quality is low or unreliable.
When it does exist, this match value can be further undermined in many ways. One way is the existence of for-profit competitors (e.g. a for-profit academy teaching blacksmithing). For-profits can be wholesome and impactful. However, these services with greater pay and resources will often poach the best teachers or students (or they can depart through intrapreneurship). The resulting adverse selection and loss of resources can collapse the non-profit.
Separately and additionally, there’s another objection to this idea that is sort of hard to unpack (like it gets into ideology/”dinner party economics”). Basically, the lack of payment or a loan system might be inefficiency or hardship, as I think you are characterizing. But also could be a strong signal that there is no real demand or value for the services (or the society is so dysfunctional that investment is uncertain and not viable).
The above issues lowers match value. In turn, this lower match value limits the resources that can be reasonably dedicated in a “professional” or “institutional” way that is needed to attract and maintain students/teachers in your proposed matching/coordination service. Again, I think this is hard and costly to do, even if most participants are volunteers.
The way I see charities today are often a disembodied entity that is results-oriented but disconnects the giver from the receiver.
When you say charities are disembodied entities, you mean giving aid or a check to some monolithic organization, who then distributes this, is impersonal.
While your experience of this “disembodiment” is correct—this is just the result of having a small, dedicated professional staff, distributing the aid fairly, effectively and efficiently.
If you wanted to distribute aid, this is probably the best way of doing it.
If you didn’t want this aid distributed, you can argue the particular aid is bad (worse than your classes) or that aid in general is bad. These argument are commonly made (there’s multiple camps/movements/literatures against poverty or development aid), but you won’t find a lot of agreement here.
Your intuitions and concerns seem correct and important. It would be wonderful to speak and watch your students grow and become independent instead. It’s not clear how to solve this problem.
I think you are proposing a kind of matchmaking system for volunteer teachers and students, or maybe a coordination website/institution for the same.
The challenge is that this system (jargon: “two sided marketplace”) is hard to execute.
The root issue is that there needs to be value for the students and teachers. But teachers are volunteers, commitment and quality requirements are deceptively high and require a lot of support, and so match quality is low or unreliable.
When it does exist, this match value can be further undermined in many ways. One way is the existence of for-profit competitors (e.g. a for-profit academy teaching blacksmithing). For-profits can be wholesome and impactful. However, these services with greater pay and resources will often poach the best teachers or students (or they can depart through intrapreneurship). The resulting adverse selection and loss of resources can collapse the non-profit.
Separately and additionally, there’s another objection to this idea that is sort of hard to unpack (like it gets into ideology/”dinner party economics”). Basically, the lack of payment or a loan system might be inefficiency or hardship, as I think you are characterizing. But also could be a strong signal that there is no real demand or value for the services (or the society is so dysfunctional that investment is uncertain and not viable).
The above issues lowers match value. In turn, this lower match value limits the resources that can be reasonably dedicated in a “professional” or “institutional” way that is needed to attract and maintain students/teachers in your proposed matching/coordination service. Again, I think this is hard and costly to do, even if most participants are volunteers.
When you say charities are disembodied entities, you mean giving aid or a check to some monolithic organization, who then distributes this, is impersonal.
While your experience of this “disembodiment” is correct—this is just the result of having a small, dedicated professional staff, distributing the aid fairly, effectively and efficiently.
If you wanted to distribute aid, this is probably the best way of doing it.
If you didn’t want this aid distributed, you can argue the particular aid is bad (worse than your classes) or that aid in general is bad. These argument are commonly made (there’s multiple camps/movements/literatures against poverty or development aid), but you won’t find a lot of agreement here.
Your intuitions and concerns seem correct and important. It would be wonderful to speak and watch your students grow and become independent instead. It’s not clear how to solve this problem.