Gap Year

Mind the Gap!

Many Sixth-formers, now in their final year of school, will be planning to spend a year abroad before starting University.  Their parents may be worrying, and asking themselves if their son or daughter will be safe.  In 1989-90 my daughter, Anna, spent a year as a Young Volunteer in Bandung, on the island of Java, teaching English in a tourism college.  More recently, my neighbour’s son, Laurence, did a similar job in North Vietnam.  Both went abroad under the auspices of an organisation called ‘Project Trust’.

Project Trust was set up in 1967 by Major Nicholas Maclean-Bristol on the Isle of Coll, and since then it has been sending young people abroad to various countries throughout the world.  Anna had been recommended to apply to them and she was called to Coll on a selection course where, with other applicants, she was tested and observed whilst working on the settlements and living with local families, over several days.

Anna enjoyed the training experience very much, as she always loved a challenge.  They were set various tasks, building dry-stone walls, tending the lazy-beds, working in the classroom, attending lectures and so on.  Anna has been a keen dancer all her life so the evening ceilidh was something she enthused about.  Before they left Coll they had a farewell service, conducted by the then chaplain, Andrew.  His wife, Vicky, was the Indonesian visitor and desk officer.

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Anna passed the selection course and later returned to Coll for training and briefing.  Each volunteer works abroad with a partner.  Anna met Penny, the one chosen for her, on the briefing course.  The two were to teach in the same establishment and to share accommodation. (Much to their bemusement, they were actually provided with only one double bed upon arrival!). 

In August that year Anna was one of six volunteers, two lads and four girls, flying out to Jakarta to start their year of adventure and exploration.  I accompanied her to Heathrow and suddenly it hit me that the moment of parting was approaching.  I couldn’t bear to see her disappearing through the departure gate so I fled.  My consolation was that Project Trust would take good care of my daughter.  They carefully monitor each host country and if there is any danger threatening, they will bring their volunteers home.  For that reason, Indonesia is no longer on the list of countries for young volunteers. 

We, as parents, had the chance to attend meetings in a choice of venues throughout Britain, one before departure and one before the return of the volunteers.  I attended the London gatherings and there I met staff from Coll, and parents of other young volunteers, some already abroad, and others preparing to go.  We were discouraged from visiting our children during their year abroad, but we were asked to write regularly to them and to help them with their spending money even though their ‘keep’ was technically covered by their sponsorship money.  In those days, communication was by letter and the very occasional phone call.  Today’s volunteers have e-mail, internet and mobile phones; communication is far easier and I doubt that volunteers would find themselves in the same situation as Anna and Penny who, six months after the fact, discovered during a chance conversation with a western tourist passing through their isolated base, that the Berlin wall had come down!

While abroad, there is a representative to whom the young people can turn in times of stress.  This is usually a British citizen living and working in the host country.  Also, a member of staff from Project Trust visits each volunteer once during the year and the volunteers have to send back reports regularly.  Project Trust makes all arrangements for travel, placements, medical and accident insurance and so on although part of the Young Volunteer’s challenge is to raise a set sum by sponsorship and I, as Anna’s mum, had to sign a guarantee to make up any shortfall.

That year the placement options were as varied as Outward Bound instructing in Hong Kong, Jackeroo-ing in the Australian outback, working in an orphanage in, eg, China / Africa, or teaching in colleges or schools, as my daughter did in Indonesia.  Many of the volunteers, including Anna, helped or worked with other institutions in their spare time (eg, The Leprosy Mission or Private Language Teaching Schools), keen to become as fully immersed in their host cultures as possible – something that few travellers can really hope to achieve.  Anna now complains that as a result of living and thinking in Bahasa (Indonesian), she can no longer access the diary that she wrote in that language!  An occasional few, like Laurence, would become so captivated by their new lives that they would go as far as staying on to work with charitable NGOs, post-placement, keen to hold on to every opportunity that came their way.

Before Anna returned home in August 1990 I spent a week on Coll with some other parents, and we sampled all that our sons and daughters had been through on their selection and training visits.  It was a great experience – both fun and educational.  It also gave us a clearer understanding of what our children had been through, during selection, and what qualities the organisation had been seeking.  We spent one day rounding up sheep, in a kind of military operation, directed by the major!  I failed in the sheep-shearing exercise, my captive running around the pen with me astride its back, screaming for help!  I was demoted to weeding the lazy beds in extreme heat!  (Lazy beds are plots of land with the soil piled in long, narrow, raised mounds, used to grow vegetables.) A day of bird-watching was far more up my street – but everyone enjoyed the ceilidh and the evening dinners, hosted by the Major and his beautiful wife, The Hon. Lavinia Bristol, (who was then the Director).  I still correspond with one of the other mothers with whom I forged a strong friendship over that week.

Would I recommend parents to encourage their own children to go abroad for a year?  I can’t pretend that there were no moments of panic and anxiety, but I had already realised that Anna was an adventurous explorer who was going to take risks and court danger, so I was happy that she chose to apply to Project Trust as opposed to setting off into the vast unknown, alone, to face whatever new cultures, civil unrests or challenges that might cross her path. 

When I had seen her off at Heathrow, in 1989, she was, effectively, still a dependent schoolgirl, but the person I met there a year later was a mature, independent adult with a wealth of experience written across her face.  Throughout the year, there had been a support network available had she ever needed it, and for this (as well as for the fact that I knew I would be kept in the loop if need be), I was very grateful.  I was also grateful that they had specifically prepared me, ahead of time, for the changes that I would encounter in her, upon return, and that they also spent time with the volunteers themselves, upon return, to facilitate their smooth readjustment into their home cultures. 

I felt that they left no stone unturned and I would recommend their excellent service to any young person wanting to ensure that his/her year abroad was well spent, bringing maximum advantages to both the host country and the volunteer.  Lavinia recently remarked that nothing much has changed since then.  I was touched by the knowledge that they remain interested in the lives of former volunteers.  Anna, in fact, attended a reunion in London on the 3^rd March and met up again with fellow-volunteers and with members of Staff who are still there from her time. 

I recently asked both Laurence and Anna for their thoughts on their gap year.

Laurence’s reply was, ‘My training week on Coll prepared me as well as anything for my year working in a rural university in Vietnam.  The subject of English language teaching was brought up, and the trainer did admirably to prepare us for the work we would be doing (something that is a bit difficult to do in less than four weeks, to be honest); we covered the basics of first aid and living away from the watchful eyes of Mum and Dad, and did lots of activities that bonded us as a group. The bond that was formed over the week on the island stayed strong for the entire year, with most of the volunteers staying in touch with each other at regular intervals.  When we met up for debriefing, it was like meeting old friends, despite the fact that we had only really spent a week with each other, at most.

In short, the training provided by Project Trust was excellent.  It wouldn’t be possible to fully prepare a group of eighteen-year-olds to live in a developing country for a year as soon as they leave school, but I left the training week fully aware of the challenges ahead of me, as well as well-briefed on how they could be dealt with.’

Anna said, ‘I have travelled in many places and met many incredible people during my life.  However, nothing comes close to those pivotal life-changing years, when I have had the opportunity to really live, work, and play amongst people from other cultures.  When fully immersed within another culture, earning a similar wage to local colleagues and, therefore, facing similar limits and challenges, you arrive at a level of understanding of collective hopes, needs and driving forces that is impossible to access when merely passing through a foreign country as a traveller.  Living for one year on the Indonesian Archipelago, with Project Trust, opened my eyes to a world that I might have missed had I simply travelled through there alone.

Since then, every time I have set off to live somewhere like Nepal, West Africa or Central America, for anything from a few months to a couple of years, I have had the same feeling of trepidation as when I first left for Indonesia (and an ever greater battle with inertia as I get older).  Now, however, I can use the experience I gained from that first year to give me confidence that I am doing the right thing; that it will be worth it in the end.  This gives me the courage to step across the threshold and to set off on each new adventure.  There are no regrets.  And no looking back.  I am very privileged.’