07 December 2005
by Tom Geoghegan
When Prince Harry spent part of his gap year working in poverty-stricken Lesotho, he helped build foundations for a new health clinic, completed a road bridge and dug trenches for crops.
Not only was this a fantastic experience for a 20-year-old, it was a great advert for volunteering - good for the CV, good for the soul and good for the village.
In a tradition more commonly encouraged at public schools, others have beaten a similar path to the developing world to help out, as if continuing a strong sense of duty, a "noblesse oblige", long associated with the upper class.
Many more people choose something worthy closer to home. And although putting in the unpaid hours at a local care home may not have the African scenery as enticement, it does have similar career benefits and the added satisfaction of helping the community where you live.
But the prospect of unwaged employment might not be so appealing if you're a cash-strapped school leaver who wants to help mum put food on the table. And for young people facing the financial burden of student loans, the need to earn during a gap year is all the more urgent.
Gordon Brown tried to address this problem in his pre-Budget report when he promised up to £100m for "volunteering in Britain and abroad for young people who could not otherwise afford this".
Prison, anyone?
The cash, from dormant bank accounts, will help to implement the proposals of the Russell Commission, set up in 2004 to encourage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to volunteer, in the hope it would provide a way into further education and employment.
The £100m, £50m of which is matched pound for pound by businesses, will fund new volunteering opportunities and raise awareness of it in deprived communities. And in recognition of the financial difficulties, a £60 weekly "wage" will cover living expenses.
The Tories are banging a similar drum. New leader David Cameron wants a national school leaver programme for people to spend three or four months doing "something that has public service at its heart". Although there is compulsion here, the plan enshrines the voluntary sector ethic of making a difference.
Volunteering is an industry estimated to be worth £22.6bn a year to the UK economy and encompassing half the population. For example, voluntary help at GP surgeries has been calculated to reduce hospital appointments by a third.
There are gaps in the volunteering industry - prisons and hospitals don't have the same attraction as tree-planting, for example. But momentum has been building this year with the government campaign Year of the Volunteer, which has received more than a billion minutes in volunteer pledges on its website.
Yet the efforts by politicians to widen the appeal of giving something back suggests many people are not reaping the benefits of taking part.
Middle-class ghetto
That's because it's more accessible to the affluent, says Caroline Diehl, chief executive of Media Trust, which is one of the Year of the Volunteer partners.
"It's easier for the middle class because there's probably a parental expectation, it's easier because there may be parental support, it's easier because of the networking, the access and the knowledge will be there," she says.
"It's not about a lack of interest among disadvantaged young people, it's more a lack of knowledge and financial resources. In communicating volunteering opportunities we haven't really reached out to those young people."
But it's no longer a middle-class ghetto and there are organisations doing a great job in getting disadvantaged youngsters involved, she says. And volunteering does not have to be full-time, so it can accommodate paid work.
WRVS is a national charity that helps people who feel isolated or lonely. It has made great strides in cities like Sheffield and Birmingham to recruit volunteers from the unemployed or from black and ethnic minorities, sometimes with help from a diversity officer with good contacts in the community.
"The key to living a fulfilled life, whatever background, is to widen your horizons, whether you've gone to Eton and you suddenly realise there's another side of life, or you've been brought up in a poor estate in Hackney," says Ms Diehl.
"It's also about being given the opportunity to show you can make a difference. So many young people grow up thinking they have nothing to offer."
Change for good
Anthony Reid's story would have Messrs Brown and Cameron purring in delight. The 19-year-old says volunteering saved him from a life of waywardness on the streets of Derby.
He completed 200 hours of voluntary football coaching intermittently over six months, and now he's in part-time paid work running a football course for disadvantaged youngsters.
"I would probably have been doing nothing, getting up to no good, if it wasn't for the Millennium Volunteers," he says. "The truth is I couldn't see myself volunteering and I would have said no but I didn't have any other work and at the time I wasn't interested in anything else but sport. It's got me a lot further than I expected."
But for others, the prospect of no wages does put them off. Mustafa Field, who runs the SAM youth club in north London for people from disadvantaged and refugee communities, says volunteering schemes like the Scarman Trust and Millennium Volunteers have been hugely beneficial to some people at his club - but there are barriers.
"It can be difficult to sell, especially to people from disadvantaged communities," he says. "They need part-time jobs and struggle to find them so they need incentives like sponsorship or money towards education.
"The families don't understand why they're doing it and can't see the benefit so they're not with them. We have problems with some families that wouldn't encourage their kids to get involved in volunteering."
And as a Muslim, he says, he recognises the need to get more female Muslims participating because the volunteer groups are dominated by men and they are the ones who take the initiative.
"We're trying to change that but it's very slow. They need to have incentives and there needs to be education from families."
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