(14 August 2007)

DITCH (UN)WORTHY CAUSES, VSO ADVISES GAP YEAR STUDENTS
- Charity says a year spent travelling can be more beneficial than doing spurious voluntary work

Ahead of the publication of A-level results later this week, international development charity VSO is cautioning young people who are taking a gap year abroad that it may be better to travel rather than take up spurious voluntary work in developing countries.

The charity is concerned that young people are coming under increasing pressure to volunteer overseas during their gap year. While it encourages volunteering for people of all ages, it says that badly planned and supported ‘voluntourism’ schemes may be having a negative impact on young people and they communities they work with. It is advising young people who are serious about gap year voluntary work to carefully research who they go with and choose a development focused organisation.

Judith Brodie, Director of VSO UK said:

“Spending your gap year volunteering overseas has become a rite of passage for young people and the gap year market has grown considerably. While there are many good gap year providers we are increasingly concerned about the number of badly planned and supported schemes that are spurious - ultimately benefiting no one apart from the travel companies that organise them. Young people want to make a difference through volunteering, but they would be better off travelling and experiencing different cultures, rather than wasting time on projects that have no impact and can leave a big hole in their wallet.”

Last year VSO warned that gappers risked becoming the new colonialists if attitudes to voluntary work in the developing world didn’t change. It argued that the gap year market was increasingly catering to the needs of volunteers, rather than the communities they claim to support. It called for a radical rethink of gap years and urged providers to work with local communities to ensure young people are doing work that has a meaningful impact.

Hannah Saunders, 19 from London, took up a placement teaching in India with a commercial organisation:

“I paid over £1000 to teach English and maths to children in Pune. I didn’t have any training or preparation from the organisation before I went, and they didn’t expect me to have any qualifications. I had a really tough time and suffered from culture shock, as India is so different from anywhere else, which I wasn’t ready for. I turned up at the learning centre and the teachers didn’t even know I was coming. It was very hard to find out what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t value for money, as there was very little support from the organisation before or during my time there.”

VSO is currently working with established gap year providers to devise a code of good practice to help would-be gappers weigh up their options. The charity has also devised a checklist designed to assess the providers’ commitment to volunteering, the communities they work in, and the young people they work with.

Gap year checklist

Fact Box

• Up to 200,000 Britons take a gap year every year, 130,000 of them are school-leavers. (Year Out Group)
• The British gap year travel market comprises approximately 1% of all UK outbound trips and around 10% of outbound travel expenditure. (Mintel)
• The average gap year traveller spends around £4,800 (Mintel)