Wondering what to do pre- or post-university? Or just want a change of direction? Rebecca Holman looks at gap year volunteering
 19-year-old Prince Harry in Lesotho this spring photo: ap photo/ben curtis |
Gap years are all the rage these days. Everyone who’s anyone has spent six months finding themselves with Bedouin in the Sahara, or traversing Bolivia with only authentic, simple peasant folk and possibly a llama for company, in an effort to discover the meaning of their life. Recently, Prince Harry was in Lesotho in Africa, where he was working with the underprivileged, including Aids orphans. At the time he was planning to go, it was even rumoured that Harry might stay “possibly in a mud hut”.
If you, like Prince Harry, fancy roughing it for a few months
while doing something more useful with your time than getting stoned in Thailand
(not that we’re
ever suggesting that Prince Harry would do that!) then SPW (Student Partnerships
Worldwide) might be the answer.
 Post-grad student Jo Ferry |
SPW’s gap year schemes offer young people the opportunity to spend up to a year in countries across the Third World, working with local schools to promote sexual health awareness. It is clear that education in young people is one of the most effective ways of eventually slowing down the spread of HIV. And the temporary export of some of our best and brightest is also good for Britain. Many who come back have a greater interest in health promotion at home, giving us experienced and well educated young people to continue the fight against Aids in the UK.
After studying psychology in America, Joanne Ferry decided to spend nine
months in Tanzania. She already had an interest in health promotion and HIV
prevention
and felt that this was a good place to start.
Joanne joined the SPW scheme post-degree, and believes it helped her decide
how she wanted to use her qualification to get the best out of her life and
career.
 Co-volunteers in Tanzania. |
Joanne loved her time in Tanzania. A typical day would start at 7.00 am, with assembly followed by classes in the morning. Afternoons would often be spent in the Youth Development Centre, which provided a library and where sports activities were also commonplace. Joanne and her colleagues used a wide range of methods to get their message across, including dance and music events containing health awareness messages and special half-time talks at sports events.
However, Joanne regrets not staying on longer. She says: “The first few months were wasted trying to build up relationships as there was no hand-over between each year of volunteers”.
 Assembly at 7am for Tanzanian students and volunteers alike on SPW’s gap year scheme |
Another problem was a distrust the locals sometimes had for the overseas volunteers. Joanne says: “We outsiders needed credibility. We solved this drawback by having local volunteers working alongside us.”
In terms of health and safety for volunteers, though, Joanne was impressed
with SPW’s approach, despite having items stolen, but this “goes
with the territory”, she concluded.
Since returning from her gap break in September 2003, Joanne has been offered
a job as Health Promotion Specialist running Sex & Relationships Education)
for Swale Primary Care Trust, providing the same sort of services to local
schools as she provided for SPW Tanzania.
Another person who turned his gap year into something positive at home is
Cameron Saul. Cameron, 22, visited Uganda for nine months with SPW as part
of his
year abroad.
“
Uganda was not at all like the vast plains I’d envisaged,” he says. “It
is a lush and diverse country, full of warm and friendly people.
“ The best aspect of the SPW scheme was the people I worked with. I got on with them incredibly well.”
Cameron also has nothing but praise for SPW’s training and support. “SPW is one of the few charities that puts its money where its mouth is and makes things happen on the ground,” he says.
Role-play and body language were the key to teaching their pupils about health
awareness.
“
I concede that African pupils are used to a more formal and ‘colonial’ style
of being taught,” says Cameron. “But despite any initial difficulties,
I remain convinced that education is really the only thing that can prevent
Aids in Africa. Look at Uganda’s falling HIV rates in the wake of their
widespread education campaign.”
Since returning to the UK, Cameron, whose father (Roger Saul) is the Managing Director of the clothing brand Mulberry, has set up his own business, Bottletop. The company aims to raise money for education programmes in the developing world through fashion and music; and most famously by selling the bottletop bags which were inspired by a Ugandan girl Cameron saw carrying a similar homemade bag during his gap year visit.
Cameron’s next fundraising projects include a series of CDs entitled ‘sound affects’. These will feature world music re-mixed by contemporary cutting edge DJs. The first in this series of CDs, ‘Afrofusion’ will be released shortly.
SPW offers a highly-organised and well-devised scheme in order to encourage young people in Britain to put their gap years to good use. But it is by no means the only company offering such schemes.
The World Youth Exchange promotes volunteering exchange programmes for young people in both the “North and South”, with the first phase of the scheme (for three months) in the UK, and the second phase in a developing country. Its Youth Outreach Programme, in partnership with VSO World Youth, runs such a programme in Cameroon, focusing specifically on problems affecting young people, including HIV and Aids.
Omer Songwee is a project supervisor for the programme. He says: “Our hope is that having young people from the UK and young local volunteers together will bring a new perspective - the global angle.
“ Young people, both in the UK and in the communities affected, get to see that the HIV pandemic has a much wider and even graver impact than the one it has on individual lives and families. They see what it does to economic and social development. They also put into practice skills that they learn, such as decision-making and communication”.
Bethan McDonald, 24, is a participant on a similar exchange in Ghana. Her experiences in Ghana encouraged her to pursue her chosen career as a research assistant at St George’s Hospital in London, where she is researching into the use of new compounds to prevent the transmission of HIV.
She says: “During my time in Ghana I decided that I wanted to use my scientific skills to do something relevant to development work, more specifically HIV research”. Bethan hadn’t realised the extent of the epidemic in Africa until she worked in Ghana.
“ The exchange brought home to me just how major a problem the HIV and Aids epidemic is. I learned the shocking statistics, sure. But I also saw first-hand how it affects people and communities.”
So the beneficiaries of gap year schemes are not just those in the recipient villages. Returning to Britain are young people determined to put their new-found skills to good use. As Cameron Saul notes: “Gap year projects are no easy ride, but are a life experience that will stand you in good stead for the future.”
SPW (Student Partnerships Worldwide): www.spw.org
The World Youth Exchange: erin.bateman@vso.org.uk
