Edition 46: Spring 2009

For decades travellers have distributed pens, candies or notebooks to hordes of excited children across Africa. While each visitor’s heart was in the right place, their actions were often harmful to the fabric of local communities. TV presenter Kate Humble believes there is a way to harness the continued good will of the travelling public, and to make use of empty space in their luggage, to provide meaningful help to the poor in Africa and around the world. It’s called stuffyourrucksack.com.

A few years ago, whilst travelling in a remote region of northern Mali, I stayed in a small village on the edge of the Sahara. There, I was invited to visit the dusty, two-roomed building on the edge of the village that served as the school. The children wanted to know how long it would take to get from their village to mine by camel – a very practical question in a part of the world where camels are the most reliable form of transport. I had to explain to them that between their village and mine was the sea, but for these land-locked children of the desert this was a concept too big to grasp. “Haven’t you got a map of the world?” asked their teacher, slightly incredulously, as if I’d forgotten something that no other person would think of travelling without. I had to confess that I didn’t and was reduced to trying to draw the world in the sand to the amused bemusement of the children.

Well-meaning visitors to poor countries frequently feel compelled to bring something with them to give to the local people. These handouts (often sweets, biros or money) can, in the end, have more of a detrimental effect than a positive one. Children, particularly, get in the habit of begging from tourists, associating them with handouts. Pulling them away from their traditional childhood activities, and even school, begging has no long-term benefits for those children. It can also be so unpleasant for visitors, that in extreme cases tourists will simply stop visiting an area, causing everyone to lose out.

However, throughout the developing world there are many small charities or schools that have a need for often simple, portable things that can make a real, tangible difference. Donating to these organisations also does not have the same negative consequences as indiscriminate good will. The frustration is, of course, you only find out what is needed in the country once you are already there. Once returning home, I’ve tried more than once to post items, but my packages have rarely reached their intended destination. Somehow I had to come up with a way of allowing travellers to pass messages on to other travellers to let them know what to bring and where to take it.

The answer lay with the internet. Hopelessly inept when it comes to computers, I needed help and it came in the form of a computer wizard in Guernsey called Don. He agreed to build the site for free and his company said they would host it, again for nothing. A local lawyer got it registered as a charitable foundation and the site was up and running entirely thanks to their generosity and good will.

Stuffyourrucksack.com now has over 150 organisations listed in 80 or so different countries, ranging from Bolivia to Rwanda. The most frequently asked for things are children’s clothes, English language books and footballs. Hilary Bradt, founder of Bradt travel guides, tried out the site prior to a trip to Namibia. With the needed books and clothes in hand she visited an after-school centre for children, many of them suffering from AIDS. Hilary and her friends ended up staying for several hours, reading stories and playing football and afterwards wrote: “It was an eye-opening, endearing and gratifying start to the trip. Of all our experiences in the country, this is the one we came back to most often in conversation.”

Environmentalists warn that long distance travel by air is harmful to our planet. I too feel very strongly that we should be doing all we can to combat climate change, but I also passionately believe that travel, if done responsibly, can be so much more beneficial to the long term health of our planet than if we simply stayed at home. So please, next time you go away, don’t forget to stuff your rucksack; and if you happen to be going to Mali, take a map of the world.