lookingaround wrote:...The guide doesn’t get paid (usually), although a few lucky ones will get their expenses reimbursed. They will incur costs like fuel, lodging, food, and supplies...
As a suggestion, you could think about replacing this with something like -
"Your group should offer to cover any reasonable expenses the guide incurs on your trip, such as fuel, lodging, food, and supplies. You may feel that your guide will decline this offer, but it should still be made. Remember, this guide has agreed to spend his or her valuable time guiding your group, and may offer to do so again."
I think the sentence before this looks fine as-is -
"It is important to consider the personal sacrifices a guide makes to take a youth group caving."
But you could lose the last couple of sentences in that paragraph -
"Most guides have lives and families of their own and the guide’s family life is as busy as anybody else’s – sometimes there just isn’t enough free time. Time spent caving with a youth group is usually time spent away from family and friends."
Covering expenses is NOT awfully close to paying the guide. Note that I avoided the term "reimbursement". This offer should be less like a payment, and more like filling the guide's vehicle with gas so he/she can get to the cave and back - or paying for a meal on the way home. If it's easier to do this in cash, so be it - as long as it's clear to all that this is not guiding-for-pay. (Unless it legitimately is, of course.
)
Many cavers decline expense coverage and reimbursement offers when guiding youth trips. However it is wrong to assume that this is the norm, and the ones who get reimbursed are the "few lucky ones". Personally, I prefer to get my fuel expenses covered on trips like this - but that's all. I feel the same way when giving rides to other cavers, if it's an organized trip and we are car-pooling. If I'm "going anyway", no big deal. But I always offer gas money to the driver when I ride with people...