14 | VOLUNTEERING ABROAD | COMMENT


W: www.ie-today.co.uk


“VOLUNTEERING IS NO LONGER A DIRTY WORD AND IT CERTAINLY SHOULDN’T BE SEEN AS SOME SORT OF EXCLUSIVE CLUB”


GOOD MIGRATIONS The benefits to young people of volunteering abroad are finally being recognised, says Joe Pearson


ABOVE: volunteering abroad should mean so much more than just a line on a student's CV


After finishing A-levels, I took a gap year. A few friends did the same. I worked in a sweet shop and many of them worked too, saving money for a trip to Africa or India to volunteer. I grew up in a relatively affluent area so I was not surprised that so many opted to volunteer abroad. Gap-year volunteering was the norm. I never bought into the idea of volunteering abroad,


however. It seemed an expensive way to achieve nothing. What on earth would an HIV positive Kenyan child growing up on a rubbish dump want with a spoty white teenager pretending to care? This is a massive oversimplification, but some of these concerns remain valid. The uncomfortable truth is that volunteering abroad is a mandatory rite of passage for children of doctors and lawyers, undertaken before they go on to Oxford or Cambridge. At best they might volunteer again after university; at worst their trip to ‘save Africa’ goes down as just another line on the CV. Volunteering in Africa is changing, though. Students


from Ely College and Ormiston Sudbury School travelled to Africa with African Adventures and worked on projects near the Hilton Dump site in Nakuru in Kenya. Ely’s group leader Mark Sirot-Smith says that the benefits for students began before they even left the UK: “First there was the confidence they gained through the fundraising process. Initially many students didn’t believe that they could raise £1,500 each, but they all did – through quizzes, curry nights, sponsored events, race nights and by directly approaching businesses. What they discovered was that many people are keen to help them, but want to see that they have taken some initiative and are not simply relying on others for hand-outs. I think they surprised themselves. “In Kenya they had to work as a team, which


is very important, but what I think they gained most of all was belief in themselves and what they could achieve. Many of the team had never really experienced success before, but to achieve what they did within a week and to be told how well they had done was a real boost to them. All of them have started to understand what they can do rather than what they can’t. Volunteer in Africa, but make sure you do it with a purpose not simply as a holiday..” Oliver King, from Ormiston Sudbury, led a similar


trip to Kenya and has similar thoughts about his students’ experiences. “Eleanor Roosevelt said ‘do one thing every day that scares you’. Wifi, hot water and electricity are all things I no longer take for granted, not just because we went without for a few hours at a time, but because we worked with young people every day succeeding with much less.” Today, then, volunteering abroad is no longer just a


line on a CV. Companies like African Adventures work in partnership with sustainable projects supported, but not dictated by UK-based organisations, and have a target market which extends beyond individual groups of wealthy gap-year students: two schools from deprived areas of Portsmouth and Glasgow, for example, recently took groups of volunteers to Kenya with the company. School, college and university students from all backgrounds too atest to the immeasurable value of volunteering abroad. Volunteering is no longer a dirty word and it certainly shouldn’t be seen as some sort of exclusive club. iE


Joe Pearson is volunteer coordinator with African Adventures T: 023 8178 0957 E: joe@african- adventures.co.uk W: www.african-adventures.co.uk


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