When Nikki Smith decided she wanted to take her daughters to Disney World, like many of us, she wasn’t sure how she could afford it. She lives in the UK, so to bring her 12 and 10-year-old girls overseas to the theme park would be pretty expensive. So Smith decided to try to crowdfund her family vacation and set up a GoFundMe campaign for the trip. And people were not happy.
Smith wanted to raise $8,000 for her Magic Kingdom vacay, through donations, but even though her plea was shared over 18,000 times on Facebook, she had only gotten $18 in donations. And people were really critical about her request for money to take a trip with her kids. So when her story made headlines, she deleted it.
But now she’s relaunched the GoFundMe page and has raised about $650 so far. It’s all a little confusing, because the mom first said it was a “bad idea.” But she’s defended herself, saying the “the press have made me out to be an awful person,” but that she was only thinking of her kids and making them happy.
“I’m traumatized by the abuse and negativity I have received and only put this back up because a lot of people said I should,” Smith explains. “Online trolls are evil, I haven’t hurt anyone and I was only trying to fulfill my children’s dreams.” She explains that if she saved up on her own for the trip, the girls would be too old to enjoy it by the time she had enough.
Source: Mamamia