<p>I really don’t want to put you off the idea of a gap year (I had one, and had a fantastic experience), BUT there are two big things to say about your plans for your gap year </p>
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<li><p>If you’re female, particularly if you’re white and female, India is HARD. I’ve been out there twice, and on the second time (I was a child the first time around, but 14 & looked younger the second time) I received a lot of overtly sexual attention from local men - requests for pictures mainly, but also some hands on the bottom etc. This happened despite the fact that I was with a man (my dad). A cousin in her early 20s has just spent some time in a different part of India and had a very similar experience. It’s fairly ingrained in the culture - it’s called ‘eve-teasing’. It’s a real shame, but it means that I probably won’t return to India in the near future, and I certainly wouldn’t go alone - and when I say that, bear in mind that I went solo around Malaysia and Australia without any problems. </p></li>
<li><p>Volunteering abroad can be seriously problematic. Don’t kid yourself that you will actually be helping those you meet. You won’t. All you’ll be doing is making yourself feel good whilst lining the pockets of the tour operator, whilst potentially having a detrimental impact on the local community.</p></li>
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<p>Almost all of these volunteering trips include one or more of the following
- teaching by Western teenagers who have no experience or training in how to teach, and aren’t following a wider curriculum. This leads to horror stories of children learning ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ from 5 successive sets of volunteers, and no actual idea of how to construct a sentence in English. Remember when you used to get a supply teacher at school, and you learned nothing? It will be like that for these kids, except all they ever get are supply ‘teachers’, and the ‘teachers’ are untrained teenagers. I’ve done some teaching-type work in the UK (my home country), always as part of a wider curriculum and with lesson plans written by others. I’ve undergone training, and trust me, it remains HARD, and I don’t think I could have done it when I was 18.
- cuddling children in orphanages. Unfortunately, because Westerners are willing to pay good money to take pictures with small children who they are convinced they are helping, this creates a market for children. As a result, children are sold, or rented out, to these orphanages by their parents, despite (you guessed it) still having living parents. Furthermore, these kids do not then have the opportunity to form secure attachments with caregivers, because they are constantly leaving. This has an incredibly negative effect on their psychological development, often known as attachment disorder [Attachment</a> disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_disorder]Attachment”>Attachment disorder - Wikipedia) .
- undercutting the wages of local people. After all, if they can get in some Westerner who will pay silly money to do menial labour, why would they bother paying wages to a local teacher / bricklayer / nursery nurse etc.
- paying vastly over the odds for accommodation and transport etc. to a tour operator. Most of this will remain in the West as profit, rather than helping locals through trade.</p>
<p>If you really want to help people in a third world country, then the best thing to do would be to give your money to Oxfam or a similar charity. Failing that, book a flight to your destination of choice and make a very conscious effort to only give your money to local companies whilst you are out there, to avoid what’s known as ‘leakage’ (profits ending up elsewhere in the world). That way you are creating jobs and trade, which is worth far more to a developing country than your labour. You’ll save a lot of money doing it that way, relative to going through some voluntourism tour operator. You could then either keep that money, stay out there for longer, or donate the rest to Oxfam etc. If you still want to do some volunteering, do it in your home town. I have done quite a lot of volunteering in my own home & college towns, and it has been a great experience. </p>
<p>It’s not just me who is saying this - this is a fairly good article on the same subject [BBC</a> News - Viewpoint: Is gap year volunteering a bad thing?](<a href=“http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22294205]BBC”>Viewpoint: Is gap year volunteering a bad thing? - BBC News)</p>
<p>As I said earlier, I really don’t want to put you off the idea of a gap year, but please do think carefully about what you will be doing and where you will be going. I’m not saying that you must stay in Western countries, or that you must travel in a group, or that you must travel with a tour company or anything like that. That’s not the case. Actually, I’d seriously advise against it. But please do read the advice from the US State Department (or even the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office) about each individual countries, and think seriously about the knock on effects of your actions upon those who you meet.</p>