A Gap Year With A Difference!

Taking a gap year has never been easier or more popular, but with so many organisations on the market, choosing the right provider is not so simple.  Finding an organisation that offers real opportunities for the people involved in the gap year, as well as the people with whom they work with, is becoming a crucial consideration for more and more young people.  One charity, Students Partnership Worldwide (SPW), is addressing both these issues and is looking for young people to take the lead in its development programmes overseas.

Based mainly in rural villages and towns, SPW volunteers work alongside local volunteers on health, education and environmental based programmes for between five and eleven months in Africa and Asia.

 Asim Haneef departed on the SPW India programme in January 2006.  

“I was continuously amazed at the depth of work I was involved in and the true grass-roots focus of the actual experience itself.  The activities that I did on placement ranged from designing a library to constructing a vegetable garden to promote healthy lifestyles.  

Working in India and its efforts to improve life in developing nations through the empowerment of youth volunteers has strengthened my belief that young people can bring about sustainable and fundamental global grass-roots change.  This can be achieved by sheer hard work and enthusiasm, and by efforts to spread awareness, as well as by practically helping the people we can with our own hands and minds, rather than just through financial support.  This idea is at the heart of SPW’s fight to help people help themselves.”

My time as an SPW volunteer definitely enriched my character and hopefully made a difference to the community that I was working with at the same time!”

For details on how to become an SPW volunteer, call Frank on 0207 222 0138 or email ­info@spw.org.

www.spw.org,