“I took over the project in 2008” Kevin told me. “I inherited an initiative where the college sent 5 people to work in a village school in Kenya. Political problems forced us to discontinue the project so I had to improvise and subsequently I arranged for 5 people to work in NGOs in Cambodia. I was then requested to expand the programme so through different channels and contacts over the last 3 years I have set up to work with 12 NGOs / educational / environmental institutions on projects in Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, India, Philippines and recently Nepal has been added to the network. We try to limit our contacts to those within in easy access of Singapore, both for ease of communication with our volunteers and also cost factors.”
The programme has certainly been successful as it has grown from its original 5 volunteers to 32 this year and an anticipated 40 next year, which is around 15% of the total graduating class. The ideology of the GAP year is putting the ideals of the UWC movement into practice by wanting to learn together and being able to care. Volunteers pay the organizations they work with in order to cover the net costs that the NGO incurs arranging the supervision and logistics of having people within their group who are not, initially, able to provide a substantial value to the organization.
UWCSEA provides a support structure for a GAP year student who in turn provides a service to an NGO, which should not take away any paid work from a local person; it is essentially value added work which should provide additional benefit to the organization. Students need counselling sessions before they leave to make sure they understand that it is the volunteers who are the major beneficiaries of the process and not the organization. They must consider what benefits the community will have as a result of their presence 6 months down the line.
Kevin has suggested our Triveni department to try to set up their own GAP year project to work within India and then it would make sense, in the long term, for both colleges to cooperate with each other and set up possible exchanges of volunteers using our Indian and South Asian connections. UWCSEA has undertaken a collaborative programme with the British Council in Singapore in order to provide potential volunteers with a 30 hour course in the basics of teaching English Language. Approximately 50 UWCSEA students successfully complete the course each academic year.
As well as heading up the GAP year department, Kevin also teaches Self Taught language classes to a group of students covering 14 different languages including our own local language Marathi. He is the teacher to 2 of our Akshara students currently studying in Singapore and was welcomed by Micha, a volunteer student herself on a GAP year from UWCSEA who is currently working with the Akshara team. She will be on campus until the end of May. Kevin and Dr Harsha Joshi, who heads up the Akshara programme, have been exploring ways in which they can formulize arrangements to allow 2 UWSEA students to work with the Akshara programme each year. Kevin has been very impressed by the quality of services and experience opportunities that this programme can offer future GAP volunteers in the fields of education and community service. It’s all in the family here at UWC you might say!
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