<p>My D volunteered in Honduras building sustainable housing for the fall semester and then went to New Zealand for the spring semester and did environmental conservation and habitat restoration. She had spent two summers in Latin America doing other volunteer work with Amigos de las Americas. So she wanted to continue working in Latin America, but also wanted something different. Going to two different countries satisfied that need. The program was called Global Volunteer Network. She loved both countries, made lots of international friends, traveled quite a bit, matured tremendously, and learned a lot. She is heading off to college next month, focused and ready. I cannot speak highly enough about the benefits of a gap year. And I was pretty scared when she first made her decision.</p>
<p>My daughter spent 6 months in Africa (Senegal and Ghana) through Projects Abroad, teaching English. The organization is pretty reliable on the whole, quality of the placements varies, I think. She really loved it, and managed to adapt to 2 completely different universes. We paid (about as much as a semester at the state u. of NY, where she is now), but she paid all her incidental expenses after working at odd jobs around home before she left. The organization prefers 3 months advance notice, but can do with much less if you decide at the last minute.</p>
<p>I spent the day yesterday at a concert at an elite high school music program where many students (and yes, two were from the UK) are doing gap years. Working in orphanages in India, Africa or Costa Rice seemed to come up a lot, with travel afterwards. Many of these students have quite a bit of money, I would say. It is not as if they are taking a year off to earn money to help pay for college.</p>
<p>Personally, I sometimes find these things a little troubling. In the 1960’s I worked with an organization that did community work (mainly housing rehab, tenant organizing, setting up playgrounds in very poor shanty towns) in the South. First, I feel we had no skills and therefore little to contribute, even though we were assigned to do things like lay linoleum, without any training at all. This was basically insulting to those served. </p>
<p>It also takes a lot of sensitivity to cross cultures suddenly, and for a short period of time, and the whole thing can smack of, pardon the triteness, but the only word I can think of is imperialism. Let’s just say it was patronizing for a 15 year-old girl w/no carpentry skills to enter a small house/shack to do work, while the male head of household, unemployed and depressed, sat in a chair. Better to have trained him, and paid him.</p>
<p>Second, and in these days of eco-tourism, maybe there is now a term like volunteer tourism, but basically, there was a voyeuristic quality to these projects, and a distasteful sense that privileged kids (or, certainly, more privileged than those served) were paying money in order to “experience” poverty. It might have helped the community more if we had simply paid the money to community members, rather than the program. As it was, any improvements we made simply raised their rents.</p>
<p>Third, and this is something for the original poster to think about, culture shock is a real phenomenon, and one that should be considered. I know that I had a lot of trouble with reentry, coming back from a poor neighborhood, which quickly felt like home despite its deprivations, to a more middle class one (I still remember my mother ordering $400 new curtains the day I came home).</p>
<p>Integrating the outrage and passionate sympathy that these experiences engender, not to mention guilt, is a difficult task that may require support and attention. Then again, if there is no aftershock, I would also worry…</p>
<p>These gap year projects are obviously popular, but it makes me have a soft spot for the kids working in the grocery store to pay to go to CC. In my own case, a group of us rebelled and refused to do the house rehab, because the situation felt uncomfortable. Instead, we started a playground program, but we worked WITH the mothers in the neighborhood, and they supplied ideas as well as food and drink, at times. </p>
<p>When an old man asked me one day “Why do you all do this work when you don’t get paid?” I was kind of stumped at how to explain. I guess I could have said “I am paying to learn about people like you,” because we certainly weren’t helping much.</p>
<p>very insightful comments, compmom.</p>