While hovering over a basic latrine, wishing the cockroach at your feet would bugger off, having spent the afternoon digging a well and the morning teaching the alphabet to highly enthusiastic but undereducated six-year-olds, it’s hard to imagine that your efforts can in fact be detrimental.

Yet this rather disheartening opinion seems to be becoming widespread. As more than 100,000 molly-coddled teenagers embark on a year out between school and university, the traditional gap experience is disappearing – while the voluntary work that is taking its place is under attack.

Not so long ago, if you told your parents and friends you were taking a gap year, expectations were of a trip around Europe on five dollars a day, or backpacking around Afghanistan without a mobile or e-mail. If you happened to meet someone delightful, or chanced a look round the local school and there was a job going, you might stay for six weeks or so. That was how Max Hildebrand, now 26, drifted through his gap year when he was 18.

“I spent a couple of months in Thailand doing the beaches, which was very relaxing,” he recalls. “Then I went travelling in India and met up with a peasant farmer who invited me to live with his family for two months.”

Six months of seeing the world on a shoestring, with few advance plans, cost Hildebrand just £1,500 and taught him independence, not to mention how you can be happy sharing a tap between four families with no chance of a bath.

Today, though, an eyebrow might be raised were a school-leaver to suggest a gap year that purely involved hitchhiking around India or partying beneath Thailand’s full moon, without a couple of months of conscience-salving volunteer work carefully organised by a specialist company.

Nowadays there are hundreds of organisations that cater for the above-mentioned volunteering, some at the eyewatering cost of £3,000 for just three months. Typically, this will buy a stint of volunteering on a project such as panda conservation or teaching English in Africa, Asia or Latin America, followed perhaps by a short safari. Some companies even organise visits for parents to check up on their teenagers.

Last week a row blew up when Judith Brodie, director of VSO UK, one of Britain’s leading charities, warned that some “voluntourism” is a waste of time and money. “While there are many good gap-year providers, we are increasingly concerned about the number of badly planned and supported schemes that are spurious – ultimately benefiting no one other than the travel companies that organise them,” she said.

Her comments infuriated many of those operating in the market, sparking a debate about the value of the new style gaps, with some arguing that old-style backpacking was more valuable, fostering greater independence and resilience among school-leavers than the newer, meticulously planned company experiences, however well supported.

Peter Bell, chairman of the Year Out Group and director of Africa and Asia Venture, is firmly on the side of the volunteers. While he accepts that there are poor companies in the market, he says the organisation that he chairs is trying to clean things up. “The Year Out Group has a code of practice, we review members and we are trying to raise the quality of the industry,” he said.

Overall, though, he adds: “The argument that doing a voluntary project during the gap year is a waste of time and students would be better off backpacking simply does not stand up.”

What do the gappers themselves think? Danny Shelton, 19, from Kent, has just returned from four months overseas costing £2,700 (the flights were extra) on four projects organised by the well-regarded company i-to-i. While he rated highly his two-month placement in Ecuador teaching children basic hygiene and numeracy including “how to brush their teeth and count up to 10”, he queried the worth of some of his work in Costa Rica, where he patrolled beaches to protect turtles and joined forest conservation schemes.

During his last placement he says that he mainly cleaned up the volunteer house, complaining that it was “not worthwhile at all . . . I felt I was doing more harm than good by being there”.

But, he added, there were pluses to being backed by a British-based company. Typically such organisations have “project managers” living in the countries to which they send gappers and Shelton was glad of their “superb” help when his rucksack was stolen and he had to spend time at the embassy sorting out new documents. Nonetheless, next time he travels he has decided to do his own thing.

Rachel Stonehouse’s gap year, organised through Bell’s company, Africa and Asia Venture, cost £3,000 for 4½ months in Uganda teaching “creative” subjects such as sport, music and art in a primary school followed by a week-long safari. Again the flights were extra, bringing the total cost to £5,500. Expensive? “At first glance I did think it was expensive, but all things considered it turned out to be good value,” she says. “My friend went off travelling and she spent £1,000 a month, so it worked out about the same.”

Stonehouse, now a student at Liver-pool University, thinks that by “living in a village I immersed myself in the culture and got to see more of it than people who just go off and see the touristy places”. Aged 18 and straight from school, she welcomed the back-up that the company gave her, as did Tim Hughes, 19, a medical student who spent several months teaching in Malawi in a school for which he has since raised £11,000.

Hughes had the best of both worlds: voluntary work that he enjoyed and thought useful, followed by a stint backpacking with a mate across the continent. “I was so much more prepared to do the backpacking after spending time in an African village,” he says.

Hildebrand, though, is still not convinced. “I don’t want to slag off the ‘voluntourism’,” he says. “Some of the projects do a lot of good. But I have a feeling some are a waste of time. Thousands of pounds for a few months seems like a lot and I suspect there are better ways of spending it.”

For him nothing beats being young and carefree, travelling the world on a whim: “I think the idea of independent travelling on a shoestring is fantastic. You might have to stay in grotty hostels with cock-roaches, but you see some of the most beautiful places in the world and mix with a wonderful community of travellers, all having fun.”

From voluntary work to mini ‘grand tours’, there are many ways to fill a gap

The gap year is now a huge industry. This is just a smattering of what’s on offer, writes Mary Braid.

PROJECT TRUST

The original gap year company, Project Trust, was founded in 1968 by Nicholas Maclean-Bristol on the island of Coll, off the west coast of Scotland. Its first three gappers went to work at a shanty school in Addis Ababa. Thousands of volunteers have followed them to 50 countries around the globe. Now the trust is looking for “self-motivated” young people who have been involved in their school newspaper. The town of Luderitz in Namibia needs volunteers who can produce a local newspaper and teach English. More information at www.projecttrust.org.uk.

THE YEAR IN INDUSTRY PROGRAMME

Needing to earn rather than spend money – so that you do not end up deep in debt at university – and anxious for relevant work experience? The Year in Industry programme may be for you. With the increasing competition for the best graduate jobs, a good working gap year on your CV could be a clincher. Jobs are on offer across the country. For example, a leading engineering consultancy is looking for a student for a year-long placement in its Newcastle office. It is offering experience of working with professional engineers as well as £12,000 a year. Further details at www.yini.org.uk.

ART HISTORY ABROAD

Money no object and thirsty for culture? Art History Abroad is suggesting that “the most heart-lifting, eye-feasting” way to spend six weeks of the gap year is a miniature “grand tour” of Italy’s finest art offerings. It is not cheap – the six-week course costs £6,100 – but the organisation argues that this is no more per week than people pay for a decent holiday or for sending their children away to school. Find out more at www.arthistoryabroad.com.

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