Mind the gap
For many young people the gap year volunteer project is a defining time in their lives. Working on a meaningful project in a developing nation brings rewards to both parties. The host community gains an enthusiastic, hard-working pair of hands; and in return the volunteer gains an experience that may forge a new outlook on life and gain all those communication and leadership skills that no in-house training scheme could ever teach.
Yet behind this appearance of altruism lies a multi-billion-pound industry. According to Mintel, the gap year market is valued at £2.2bn in the UK and globally at £5bn. It is one of the fastest growing travel sectors of the 21st century, and the prediction is for the global gap year market to grow to £11bn by 2010. Many within the industry are concerned that the market is being exploited by profit-oriented, and often unscrupulous, operators.
The gap year is nothing less than a phenomenon. In 2006, 74 UK-based gap-year operators sent at least 25,000 gappers overseas, a rise of 50 per cent on 2005. It is thought that in total 200,000 British people of all ages now take time out each year. Some of the grass-roots, not-for-profit operators are sceptical that there are really that many places available on authentic, properly researched projects across the world. Instead, the worry is that some gap operators are responding to demand from those looking for a gap year, as opposed to need from developing nations.
Justin Francis, managing director of responsibletravel.com, feels that the popularity of the gap-year concept is proving its undoing. ‘It’s expanded dramatically and therein lie
some of the problems,’ he says.
‘There are definitely mixed performances in terms of responsible tourism. You used to have to sign up for a long period of time and it was focussed on hard-core volunteering. But some elements of it have now become soft adventure travel. Some businesses feel this is the kind of trip from which you can make money. I don’t have a problem with that for normal holidays, but for volunteeering it’s incredibly important that you are meeting a real need.’
Statistics tend to back Francis’s view. Tourism Concern, an independent, campaigning charity that fights exploitation in the tourism industry, has surveyed the majority of the UK’s gap year operators. Its report, Gaps In Development, published last year, found that of 74 UK-based organisations, only 50 per cent mentioned partner satisfaction or project sustainability as requiring monitoring or evaluation.
Other elements of the operators’ approach are also shown to be lamentable. Tourism Concern’s research showed that 27 per cent offered neither face-to-face interviews nor provided pre-departure training. When it comes to working with children, standard procedures, which are statutory in the UK, are often ignored. Only 57 per cent of organisations requested disclosure checks of volunteers, while 17 of the 40 organisations that operated projects where volunteers worked on a one-to-one basis with children did not request disclosure checks.
‘We’re seeing a growing commercialisation of the sector,’ says Rachel Noble, campaigns officer for Tourism Concern.
‘The sector is growing at a vast rate and needs to be brought into line. There are companies that are largely motivated by profit and don’t really care about the project.’
One consequence of this is that many volunteers, who set out full of enthusiasm and determined to make a positive impact, return disillusioned, with 37 per cent of volunteers questioned by Tourism Concern admitting that they felt their work was of no benefit to the local community.
This hard-nosed commercial approach risks distorting the concept of helping others, according to Keith Kelly, a former volunteer and employee with Raleigh International. Keith is uneasy about the way in which many commercial companies encourage clients to fundraise to pay for their trip. ‘What concerns me are commercial gap year companies who use fundraising as a commercial tool. It’s as if someone came up to you in a pub and said they were fundraising for Shell. Would you give in those circumstances? We’ve now had seven or eight years of young people whose first experience of fundraising is to help a commercial operation line its own pockets. The consequence is that in 20 years’ time we’re going to have a society that doesn’t understand what “giving” means.’
In response, many within and outside the gap year industry are calling for greater regulation.
A code of practice – though a voluntary one – already exists for those 35 operators who belong to the Year Out Group, a not-for-profit trade association. But even Richard Oliver, the group’s chairman, has misgivings about some operators. ‘I’m concerned that there are a lot of start-up operators and of the need to keep control of them,’ he says. ‘But there is a perception that operators simply go into places and bully an organisation into working with them. It may be that some do that in some places, but not all the time. The key is to read up on the operators. You’d be amazed at just how little research people do.’
Tourism Concern, however, feels regulation should go further, and the it is in the final stages of establishing a code of practice for the industry, which would involve the creation of a kite mark scheme. This would require gap-year organisations to prove that their projects are long-term and sustainable, not just established hastily to meet the latest fashionable cause or popular destination; and demonstrate there is a need from the host community. They must also ensure the scheme does not impose an undue financial burden on the host community and that it provides pre-trip training and support on return. Companies will risk being blacklisted if they do not comply. They will also be obliged to disclose how they spend the fees that are paid by students – an issue that appears to be raised more than any other on gap-year internet forums.
Yet while the code sounds sensible, Professor Harold Goodwin, of Responsible Tourism Management and director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University, suspects that it may prove insufficient to make the industry clean up its act. ‘The trouble with any code of conduct is that unless a critical mass of operators signs up, it is merely a wish list,’ he says.
‘So many companies claim to be ethical and responsible – how on earth do people get behind the marketing speak?’
The key, according to Abbie Fulbrook, a spokeswoman for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), is research. ‘You need to examine the organisation very thoroughly, but if you haven’t been to a developing country before it can be difficult to know what to ask or look out for. It’s certainly not all bad, but until the introduction of such a scheme the message is “buyer beware”.’
The impact of all of this is that excellent gap-year operators fear being tainted by association. Azafady, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works with local people to conserve threatened forests in Madagascar, installs wells and sets up local pharmacies, won the best volunteering organisation prize in the 2007 Responsible Tourism awards. ‘The key issue is motivation,’ says managing director Mark Jacobs. ‘If the aim is to make money, then generally the schemes are a load of rubbish. The industry is getting slammed and it’s a pity, because there are many good, and usually small, operators out there. But the sentiment is understandable if a company is effectively sending one group of people out to dig a hole and another group to fill it in.’
Yet behind this appearance of altruism lies a multi-billion-pound industry. According to Mintel, the gap year market is valued at £2.2bn in the UK and globally at £5bn. It is one of the fastest growing travel sectors of the 21st century, and the prediction is for the global gap year market to grow to £11bn by 2010. Many within the industry are concerned that the market is being exploited by profit-oriented, and often unscrupulous, operators.
The gap year is nothing less than a phenomenon. In 2006, 74 UK-based gap-year operators sent at least 25,000 gappers overseas, a rise of 50 per cent on 2005. It is thought that in total 200,000 British people of all ages now take time out each year. Some of the grass-roots, not-for-profit operators are sceptical that there are really that many places available on authentic, properly researched projects across the world. Instead, the worry is that some gap operators are responding to demand from those looking for a gap year, as opposed to need from developing nations.
Justin Francis, managing director of responsibletravel.com, feels that the popularity of the gap-year concept is proving its undoing. ‘It’s expanded dramatically and therein lie
some of the problems,’ he says.
‘There are definitely mixed performances in terms of responsible tourism. You used to have to sign up for a long period of time and it was focussed on hard-core volunteering. But some elements of it have now become soft adventure travel. Some businesses feel this is the kind of trip from which you can make money. I don’t have a problem with that for normal holidays, but for volunteeering it’s incredibly important that you are meeting a real need.’
Statistics tend to back Francis’s view. Tourism Concern, an independent, campaigning charity that fights exploitation in the tourism industry, has surveyed the majority of the UK’s gap year operators. Its report, Gaps In Development, published last year, found that of 74 UK-based organisations, only 50 per cent mentioned partner satisfaction or project sustainability as requiring monitoring or evaluation.
Other elements of the operators’ approach are also shown to be lamentable. Tourism Concern’s research showed that 27 per cent offered neither face-to-face interviews nor provided pre-departure training. When it comes to working with children, standard procedures, which are statutory in the UK, are often ignored. Only 57 per cent of organisations requested disclosure checks of volunteers, while 17 of the 40 organisations that operated projects where volunteers worked on a one-to-one basis with children did not request disclosure checks.
‘We’re seeing a growing commercialisation of the sector,’ says Rachel Noble, campaigns officer for Tourism Concern.
‘The sector is growing at a vast rate and needs to be brought into line. There are companies that are largely motivated by profit and don’t really care about the project.’
One consequence of this is that many volunteers, who set out full of enthusiasm and determined to make a positive impact, return disillusioned, with 37 per cent of volunteers questioned by Tourism Concern admitting that they felt their work was of no benefit to the local community.
This hard-nosed commercial approach risks distorting the concept of helping others, according to Keith Kelly, a former volunteer and employee with Raleigh International. Keith is uneasy about the way in which many commercial companies encourage clients to fundraise to pay for their trip. ‘What concerns me are commercial gap year companies who use fundraising as a commercial tool. It’s as if someone came up to you in a pub and said they were fundraising for Shell. Would you give in those circumstances? We’ve now had seven or eight years of young people whose first experience of fundraising is to help a commercial operation line its own pockets. The consequence is that in 20 years’ time we’re going to have a society that doesn’t understand what “giving” means.’
In response, many within and outside the gap year industry are calling for greater regulation.
A code of practice – though a voluntary one – already exists for those 35 operators who belong to the Year Out Group, a not-for-profit trade association. But even Richard Oliver, the group’s chairman, has misgivings about some operators. ‘I’m concerned that there are a lot of start-up operators and of the need to keep control of them,’ he says. ‘But there is a perception that operators simply go into places and bully an organisation into working with them. It may be that some do that in some places, but not all the time. The key is to read up on the operators. You’d be amazed at just how little research people do.’
Tourism Concern, however, feels regulation should go further, and the it is in the final stages of establishing a code of practice for the industry, which would involve the creation of a kite mark scheme. This would require gap-year organisations to prove that their projects are long-term and sustainable, not just established hastily to meet the latest fashionable cause or popular destination; and demonstrate there is a need from the host community. They must also ensure the scheme does not impose an undue financial burden on the host community and that it provides pre-trip training and support on return. Companies will risk being blacklisted if they do not comply. They will also be obliged to disclose how they spend the fees that are paid by students – an issue that appears to be raised more than any other on gap-year internet forums.
Yet while the code sounds sensible, Professor Harold Goodwin, of Responsible Tourism Management and director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University, suspects that it may prove insufficient to make the industry clean up its act. ‘The trouble with any code of conduct is that unless a critical mass of operators signs up, it is merely a wish list,’ he says.
‘So many companies claim to be ethical and responsible – how on earth do people get behind the marketing speak?’
The key, according to Abbie Fulbrook, a spokeswoman for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), is research. ‘You need to examine the organisation very thoroughly, but if you haven’t been to a developing country before it can be difficult to know what to ask or look out for. It’s certainly not all bad, but until the introduction of such a scheme the message is “buyer beware”.’
The impact of all of this is that excellent gap-year operators fear being tainted by association. Azafady, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works with local people to conserve threatened forests in Madagascar, installs wells and sets up local pharmacies, won the best volunteering organisation prize in the 2007 Responsible Tourism awards. ‘The key issue is motivation,’ says managing director Mark Jacobs. ‘If the aim is to make money, then generally the schemes are a load of rubbish. The industry is getting slammed and it’s a pity, because there are many good, and usually small, operators out there. But the sentiment is understandable if a company is effectively sending one group of people out to dig a hole and another group to fill it in.’
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