This past spring, O heroes, the tragically misguided public service branch of the Oregon athletic department, made their annual "Courts for Kids" charity trip. The group takes 20 student athletes (28 people total) from a variety of sports and ships them to a 3rd world country to build a concrete basketball court. Last year, the athletes went to The Domincan Republic, and this past month, the O Heroes athletes made the trip to Casa Blanca, Peru.
The players rave about the cultural experience that they've made, going and truly helping those in need. As one player put it, "it was an incredible feeling to be able to provide a safe place for the kids of Casa Blanca to play and for the community to come together,” **Brooke said."**
Now,most people (especially the athletes who went) and those reading these articles think that this was a truly wonderful charity event, a great experience and place to play for the Casa Blanca Natives, and that overall it's a truly uplifting story. However, I'm going to ask you to step back for a minute and rethink this conclusion that many have, and to look at the logistics of what this trip required and cost* for what the results actually yielded.
*note, I have made my estimations conservatively to give OHeroes the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
Looking at expenses of the trip, the average cost of a plane ticket to Lima, Peru from Portland, Oregon during July booked 1 year in advance is ~$1,200 USD. Assuming that UofO has some sort of deal with airlines and group prices, I'll round down and simply assume the cost of each ticket was $1,000 USD per person, and with 20 athletes and 8 supervisors, airfare alone is $28,000
2nd, room and board. In all honesty, I'm not sure where they stayed and how much it cost. I will assume each person was approximately $10 per day in both housing and food costs in a 3rd world country. (28 people * $20 * 5 nights away) = $2800 in room and board, although likely more.
3rd. Transportation. Gas is $1.40/liter (or $5.30 per gallon) in Peru, and they had to and from the airport (both to Portland and back, around Peru). Again, as an underestimation, this would cost$400-$500 depending on how they got around. Again, I'd assume it cost far more than this, but I'd like to lean towards underestimation.
So, with the 3 biggest costs, not including the hours spent on organizing this trip by the UO administration, we're at approximately $31,500 USD just to get to Peru, and survive for a few days. This calculates to be $88,389 PERUVIAN DOLLARS SPENT TO GET THEM THERE.
Oh god. What a travesty and waste of money to build one concrete basketball court. As I was writing the cost, Dan linked me the video of the O Heroes trip. In the very first second of the video, you can see that O Heroes GROSS CHARITABLE GAIN LAST YEAR WAS $23,818. THIS MEANS THAT THEY LOST NO LESS THAN $8,000 based on my underestimations of just travel cost from their entire year. Keep in mind, O Heroes spends a lot more money on other things aside from this trip throughout the year.
Ok, now I'll ask you to realize what you can do with that money if you donated it directly to the people of Casa Blanca, Peru. According to this article, the "Cost of living to build a house: The total cost, which includes interior finishing, doors, windows, and bathroom, works out to approximately $100 per square metre -- a bargain, even in Peru, where the shortage of affordable housing is estimated to be at least a million units [....] a family can get a 55sq m home for $5,000 USD and live comfortably." So instead of building a home for 6 families (~24 people) to live comfortably, they built a flat slab of concrete for the 3rd world people to play basketball on.
At least Peruvians like basketball though... right? Wait. No. They don't. Of Peru's top 8 most popular sports, Basketball is not listed. Peru has never had a professional player in the NBA, (2nd source). and is listed as the 9th shortest country in the world for males and 7th shortest country in the world for females. So... why did the UofO decide to build a basketball court? Wouldn't a soccer field, or an area for taewkwando matts have been a better use of resources and funds? I honestly have no explanation on why they chose basketball... maybe because it's the easiest? I'm not sure.
But Ty, What about the players? What about the cultural experiences they gained? Well, if the point of this trip is to benefit the players the most, then that's a completely selfish reason to be "charitable." In fact, that's not charity at all, that's just spending money on an experience. And yes, they did create a basketball court that otherwise wouldn't have existed, there's no argument against that. HOWEVER, if you were to hire and pay for 28 local Peruvians to do manual labor there, not only would you be putting in to their economy directly, you'd also be saving O Heroes a substantial amount of money to yield the same result
(28 laborers* $4usd/hour (10 peruvian dollars/hour) * 10 hours of work per day * 3 days) = $3,360 TO BUILD THE EXACT SAME COURT. The cost of raw materials is the same regardless, so I did not include that in the calculation. If you did that, you could build the same court and no less than 5 quality homes for families.
So, through the expense of no less than $31,500 USD (although they could have saved ~$28,000 USD to yield the same results), The kids now have a concrete slab to play on, and the athletes have a valuable experience in manual labor.
So, through the expense of no less than $31,500 USD (although they could have saved ~$28,000 USD to yield the same results), The kids now have a concrete slab to play on, and the athletes have a valuable experience in manual labor.
