We report today on a young man who went to Calcutta to help to feed homeless children, only to discover that the gentleman running the scheme expected the children to fend for themselves from Friday evening to Monday morning because he preferred not to work at weekends. We also report on a young woman who signed up for a gap-year project to survey an endangered reef, but found when she got there that it had already been surveyed — a mere 200 times.
What shattered hopes! What cruelly betrayed idealism! What useful lessons in life. These two self-styled ambassadors of British goodwill are to be admired for their selflessness; for seeking to “contribute”, as the brochures put it, to less fortunate people and supposedly blighted places during those special, unrepeatable months between school and university when time can seem to pause and horizons retreat to shimmering infinity. But whatever were they thinking? Anyone who signs up — and pays — for a prepackaged gap-year “project” immediately becomes less a saviour of the world than a well-intentioned customer.
Attitudes to gap years risk becoming “colonial”, according to Voluntary Service Overseas. This is fatuous. Even capitalists can agree that colonialism was often driven more by profit than by altriusm. But no less fatuous is VSO’s exhortation to “gap-year providers” to “raise their game”. The only true gap-year provider is the 19-year-old who decides to take one. He or she should bin the brochures, buy a backpack and seek enlightenment from spontaneous adventure. This is the sort that no one else has organised, but from which everyone can profit.