Gap Year Volunteers

Who: Gap Year Volunteers
Age: Typically 18-26
What: Volunteer internationally in their gap years

The "gap year" is not as often exploited in the United States as it is in the UK and Canada in particular. There, many students take a year either between high school and college or after completing their undergraduate degree to explore the world outside organized educational boundaries. This story from the National Post is about students using their gap years to volunteer internationally.


Friday, March 28, 2008
Presented by 'You will face who you are': A guide to doing good for gap year
Sandy Fife, National Post Published: Friday, March 28, 2008
Courtesy Jacqueline Wong

The winner of a local election was throwing a victory party for residents of the baranguay in AlangAlang, in the central Philippines. He converted the basketball court to an outdoor banquet hall with music, tables and chairs, a stage for speeches and a feast that saw a whole cow spit-roasted over a fire. Jacqueline Wong, a 25-year-old volunteer health worker from Toronto, watched her neighbours party and felt she'd arrived in the Philippines. "It really opened my eyes to the sense of community," she says.

Wong is one of thousands of Canadians between 18 and 34 who take time out to volunteer, work or travel in other countries each year, under international youth programs made possible by federal agreements with about 40 other governments. Gap-year travel - or a trip before, during or just after college or university - is a time-honoured tradition. These days, many kids are choosing to combine it with paid or unpaid jobs.

Their reasons include the desire to do good, to offset travel expenses and to immerse themselves in a particular culture. "The best way to learn about a place is to spend some time living there, and working or volunteering provides that opportunity," says Jeff Minthorn, editor of Verge, a Canadian magazine about travel "with a purpose."

"Working or volunteering abroad also looks great on a résumé or university application," Minthorn adds. "It's one thing to say, ‘I spent the last year backpacking around Australia and Southeast Asia,' quite another to say, ‘While I was there, I worked on a farm in Western Australia and volunteered in Thailand teaching English to schoolchildren.' "

Other rewards are less tangible. "Clients come back from a work or volunteer experience changed," says Karen Moore, Ottawa-based manager of sales and development for Travel Cuts' international programs. "They are more confident, know what they want out of life and realize there is another world where people struggle just to survive. It makes them realize how lucky they are, and more tolerant of other cultures."

Nevertheless, the decision to work or volunteer abroad deserves careful consideration. A good start is to check out the opportunities offered by well-established programs such as Travel Cuts' Work Abroad and Volunteer Abroad. After that, a self-assessment is in order. Factors such as your age, finances, skills and previous travel experience may influence your choice of when and where you go and what you do there, program organizers point out.

"Travelling is not always cool. It is also difficult," says Jonathan Paquet, president and co-founder of Horizon Cosmopolite, a Montreal agency that helps students find and prepare for international volunteer placements. "You will face who you are. You may cry because you miss your mom. You will ask yourself why you decided to go to that village where there are cockroaches in the bathroom."

Here are the stories of three Canadians who braved those hazards and came back from their travels eager to do it all over again:

Alex James, Toronto

James was 18 and finished high school when she went to Guyana as a Youth Challenge International (YCI) volunteer in early 2006. She and 12 other volunteers spent eight weeks in three communities, leading workshops on health and social issues such as HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and women's empowerment.

She had no international travel experience and the trip was the longest that she'd been away from home. But the decision to go was easy. "Post-secondary education didn't excite me. Travel did," she says. "I was fascinated and intrigued and even a little giddy at the idea of volunteering abroad."

YCI, like many volunteer organizations with a focus on developing countries, requires participants to raise the funds for their project and airfare. Scraping together the approximately $5,000 James needed took a lot of work. She hosted an evening of live music and theatre, with a raffle and bake sale, and collaborated with other Toronto-area volunteers on another raffle, for a pair of Lord of the Rings tickets.

YCI provided pre-departure training about culture, communicating and the project, as well as orientation for the volunteers in Guyana. Its Web site warns applicants they may have to sleep on the ground or use outdoor bathrooms in their host countries. But James still missed the comforts of home. "I lived in very close quarters with my group members, slept in a hammock, bathed and washed my clothes in a river, and used stinky, dirty outhouses, which were covered in cockroaches at night," she says.

And she was often homesick. "The first night was especially hard. I was exhausted, already covered in

mosquito bites, and felt very sad - almost wished I could turn around and go home."

But she enjoyed connecting with people in the communities in which she worked, especially playing with the kids, who taught her that the hokey-pokey's appeal cuts across all cultures.

The residents of each community thanked the volunteers by holding a bonfire for them the night before they left. Everybody serenaded each other and had a good time.

James's trip gave her knowledge of another culture and the understanding that there are many other ways of life, not to mention an enduring gratitude for basics like running water.

"More than anything, I came home with itchy feet, wanting to get out there and see more of the world," she says.

Last fall, after a semester of college and a stint at a full-time job, she did just that, travelling to Uganda as a volunteer for Kirabo Canada.

"Travel is such a rewarding and enriching experience," she says. "It's a whole other kind of learning. The opportunity to go to school will always be there; most of the awesome youth programs out there have age restrictions."

Chris Roosenboom, Bathurst, N.B.

Roosenboom, a Guelph, Ont., native who's training in New Brunswick for a career as a geophysicist, had finished his undergrad degree in his hometown and worked for a year when wanderlust struck. He decided to travel instead of starting a PhD program in the fall of 2006. He left in October, on a SWAP UK working holiday that spanned 11 months and five mostly poorly paid service-industry jobs.

"I wanted to learn about who I was and how other cultures do things differently. I also wanted to improve my social skills and get more confidence," he says. He chose Edinburgh as his destination because he wanted to see the Highlands, drink Scotch and learn about the history - and because a friend told him the city is a great party place.

Roosenboom made friends in advance through a SWAP chat room, and arranged to meet them in Edinburgh. SWAP (which is run by Travel Cuts in Canada) helped him arrange visas and accommodation for the first few days. His biggest pre-departure worries were saving enough money for the trip, waiting for his visa to arrive and packing light.

His "Wow, I'm here" moment came when he stepped off the double-decker airport bus on Waverley Bridge, "with big buses going every which way, strange-looking taxis darting about and, down the valley, Edinburgh Castle with the sun shining behind it," he says. "Was quite the day."

Roosenboom used the U.K. as a home base, travelling to other countries as the opportunity arose. He didn't have to cope with a new language or culture. But he had to adapt to being alone and develop self-reliance. Building up his tolerance for alcohol was also a challenge. "It's all one big party," he says.

Well, not quite. His jobs ran from boring and sometimes unpleasant stints cleaning and working the reception desk at a hostel, where he lived for free, to customer service at a baked-potato shop, where he had fun, and waiter/bartender at an Oxfordshire pub, where he felt like a slave. But he landed on his feet at the Jam House back in Edinburgh, where he became headwaiter and employee of the year, winning a trip for two to Birmingham, with dinner at a five-star restaurant and a night of clubbing.

Roosenboom came home "a completely different person," more comfortable with himself, more sociable and more confident with the opposite sex. His advice to other students considering a working holiday abroad: "Take the plunge! It is freaking scary but once you get there, it is excellent. And most important,

don't plan - just go with it. The random experiences are the best, and the ones you learn most from."

Jacqueline Wong, Toronto

Wong, a pharmacy grad, wanted a chance to observe health care in other parts of the world. She spotted a Horizon Cosmopolite ad for a volunteer job at a clinic in rural AlangAlang on a university career Web site in 2006. Knowing many residents of the Philippines speak English and that she'd be close to other Asian countries she wanted to visit, she jumped at the opportunity.

Wong was a seasoned traveller, having toured Europe, explored Spain on her own and studied in Italy for a month on a university exchange. Still, she was nervous about travel and accommodation. Horizon Cosmopolite liaised with the organization Volunteer for the Visayans, in Tacloban, which arranged her placement and home stay. Wong couldn't attend the pre-trip seminar. But a Lonely Planet guide introduced her to the culture and everyday life in the Philippines.

Her home stay in Tacloban was comfortable and welcoming - her hosts gave her their bedroom - and her days settled into a routine: up at 7 for an hour-long jeepney ride to the clinic where she worked as a receptionist for three weeks, tutoring local kids or relaxing at a coffee shop in downtown Tacloban after work and dinner (typically meat, stir-friend veggies and rice) at her home stay. A volunteer for the Visayans arranged excursions to its projects, local tourist attractions and beaches.

Typhoon season limited travel. But Wong and a friend took a weekend trip to a neighbouring island, where they saw rice paddies and swam in hot springs and under waterfalls. Their driver ran out of gas and they purchased two litres from a roadside stand, which was poured into glass Coke bottles - "the perfect quirky ending to an unusual day," Wong says.

Her biggest challenge was "just letting go of what I knew from living in Canada," she says. "Things are done differently in Tacloban, and I needed

to adjust." Her worst time came after eating balut, a fertilized duck egg that's a local delicacy. It didn't agree, and she had to stay home for a day.

But she enjoyed learning about a different culture, making new friends, picking up a bit of Waray-Waray and seeing how health care is delivered in the Philippines.

"Keep an open mind," she advises would-be international volunteers. "Once you find a program offered by a reliable organization, don't hesitate to register. And once you arrive, enjoy what the country has to offer and don't dwell on preconceptions."

MORE: Weigh the risks and rewards

Working and volunteering abroad are popular gap-year options. Horizon Cosmopolite, a Montreal-based volunteer-placement agency founded in 1997, has seen participation grow to 350 a year from 35 in 1999.

Kids who do it may develop a new sense of direction, greater appreciation for family, freedom and our privileged lifestyle and an understanding of what it's like to be the outsider in an unfamiliar culture. They also get valuable international work experience: 82% of respondents to a July, 2007, survey of employers by the University of Toronto's career centre see travel abroad as an asset on a résumé.

On the downside, volunteering abroad is expensive. Most organizations require participants to raise funds, and the service-industry and ESL teaching jobs travelling students often take tend to be poorly paid and are sometimes exploitive. Loneliness and homesickness can loom large - particularly in places with limited phone and Internet service - and scams, illness, accidents and trouble with foreign authorities are real risks.

The Martlet, the University of Victoria's newspaper, warned readers last fall that Japan's biggest private

language school had ceased paying some of its employees, but was still hiring Canadian students to teach in its schools. In November, British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons was imprisoned in Sudan for allowing her students there to name a teddy bear after the Easter Bunny. And in March of last year, British teen Georgia French died in a bus crash in the Andes while on a gap-year trip with friends; her parents, having learned that 500 people die each year in similar accidents in Peru, launched GapAid, a Web site meant to alert other kids and parents to scams and country-specific hazards.

Young, inexperienced travellers and those who strike out on their own are most at risk, regardless of their destinations. Jeff Minthorn, editor of Verge magazine, recommends that kids seek out reputable organizations that specialize in arranging international working and volunteering holidays. These NGOs (non-government organizations) help with everything from cultural orientation, travel arrangements and job and volunteer placements to ongoing support in the destination country. Moreover, they will take into account the traveller's goals, expectations and experience.

For example, Travel Cuts would steer an 18-year-old fresh out of high school to a work placement in the United Kingdom rather than, say, South Africa, says Karen Moore, manager of sales and development for the company's international programs. "It's not too far away and not too much of a culture shock. Our partners there help students find work and accommodation with roommates, and even organize social activities."

Students who hook up with well-run organizations tend to get more out their experiences, because they're well prepared and have realistic expectations, says Jonathan Paquet, of Horizon Cosmopolite.

Beyond that, it helps to cultivate personal qualities such as a positive attitude, sense of humour and flexibility. "We all deal differently in a cross-cultural context," Paquet says. "Some people go on a project and only have complaints; another person comes back from the same project only with positive comments."

Sandy Fife, Weekend Post