A year to save the world

The Asian tsunami has inspired many young people to do relief work abroad

Many of the most popular resorts have recovered, but those harrowing images have given a new generation of gappers a sense of purpose. This year an unprecedented number of young travellers have altered their plans in order to volunteer with the relief effort in South and South-East Asia. There is much more to be done.

Hugo Blott was one of the gappers who unexpectedly became a volunteer.

"I'd already bought my round-the-world ticket when the tsunami happened, and I actually left the UK on Boxing Day," he explains. When he reached Thailand two months later, Blott was happy to muck in with the other volunteers on Koh Jan, a small island near Koh Phi Phi.

"I was rewiring a generator and helping to set up lighting. It was relatively simple electrics, so I used the small amount of expertise that I'd picked up at home. A lot of the time was spent searching for buried cables. The tidal surge had dragged a lot of sand and rock over the cables and the generator kept shorting out as a result."

On Thailand's west coast, Blott had seen the areas where the tsunami had caused less damage - and had less of an effect on the tourist industry. But, he says, "Koh Jan was predominantly a fishing island with just a few tourist areas. We were in the area that had been worst hit, but unfortunately it was also the least touristy area so it was finding it harder to bounce back because of the lack of money. The smaller resorts aren't built with money, they're built with hard work and local materials; the people that own them lost everything overnight."

Those who have visited the affected areas more recently have had more time to organise structured volunteering placements. Katie Finlay, 20, has just spent a month in Panadura, on the east coast of Sri Lanka, with Teaching and Projects Abroad.

"I always wanted to do some sort of project in the Third World," she explains, "and when I read about this particular project, after seeing the disaster unfold on television, I knew it was the one I wanted to do."

Finlay's placement involved teaching English at a local school and volunteering for three days of each week at a refugee camp. "It really involved the pastoral care of the children, playing games with them, singing songs," she says. "We played a lot of badminton and taught them the hokey-cokey!"

Finlay stayed with a host family who were lucky - their house was far enough inland not to have been badly affected by the tidal wave. Many of the schoolchildren had not been so fortunate.

"In our school of about 200, the teachers told us, 70 children were directly affected by the tsunami - losing their parents, their friends, their homes.

"We travelled south and saw devastated areas where the debris hadn't yet been cleared from the beaches. There were still houses lying in ruins there. Everywhere we went, the effect of the disaster was obvious. And even if there weren't visible signs any more, the subject was on everyone's lips."

David Innes was brought up in Sri Lanka and, since the tsunami, has become heavily involved with a small charity, Ragalla Aid, building two homes on Sri Lanka's east coast for girls from either the long-term poor or those impoverished by the disaster.

"I think there will always be a need for volunteers in a place like Sri Lanka," he says. "Right now, it would be great to find young people to come and work in the homes that Ragalla Aid already runs.

"When we had some English girls recently, the good effect it had on both them and the Sri Lankan girls was electric."

Worldwide Volunteering run a database that matches potential volunteers to the organisations that best suit their aspirations and qualifications. Roger Potter, WWV's founder, is clear about the importance of planning your placement before jetting off to a disaster zone.

"Young people have to be realistic about what they can actually do," he argues. "It's no use having hordes of 19-year-olds turning up at Columbo airport wanting to help, without any idea of what they might do, because the chances are that they won't be much use."

A bit of research can come in extremely useful. "The organisations on our database cover all the things that people want to do," says Potter. "Agricultural work, digging wells, building schools, looking after orphans, repairing infrastructure and so on."

One of Innes' main aims is to persuade young people taking gap years to travel to countries where they can get involved with, and be of benefit to, a local community. "They shouldn't just be strapping on a backpack and going off to Australia," he says. "There are too many young people aimlessly globetrotting."

After all the time spent on apparently minor jobs like re-wiring or doing the hokey-cokey, it's important for volunteers to know that even the small tasks they may be given will make a difference.

"The guy I was working for on Koh Jan said he'd only had volunteers coming to stay at his tiny resort since the tsunami," Blott remembers. "He was pretty negative about his chances of getting the business back up and running.

"But as I finally left the island on the night boat, I could see the lights back on again and people eating in the restaurant. That was really rewarding."

Worldwide Volunteering: www.wwv.org.uk

Teaching and Projects Abroad: www.teaching-abroad.co.uk

'We just had to get stuck in and do what we could in the circumstances': Emma Prest, 21, worked on a project in Hikkaduwa, in southern Sri Lanka

The project involved relocating a devastated village inland and building 24 new houses for the villagers. It was funded by a Texan lady, who had visited the area after the tsunami and fallen in love with a six-year-old Sri Lankan girl. She supplied the materials and paid the builders.

There were masons on the site, but each family was expected to get involved in the building of their own houses. Unfortunately, they didn't always turn up, and Sri Lankan building methods are quite inefficient so it could be frustrating. One woman who had lost her husband in the disaster was keen to start her new life and turned up every day. Her house was finished first, but no one was allowed to move in until they were all finished, so she had to wait.

We just had to get stuck in and do what we could under the circumstances. We levelled ground to lay concrete foundations with one spade between the four of us, but eventually the results of our hard work were there to see. I actually found the manual labour really rewarding. TW