A world apart

ON March 23, 1958, the Bishop of Portsmouth wrote to The Sunday Times. "A number of headmasters are very much aware that many of their senior boys, including the most gifted, are having to wait a year before vacancies become available in universities and technical training," he wrote.

"So many of these young people have something very worthwhile to give; but where and how? It is, I submit, the underdeveloped territories of the Commonwealth that today offer opportunities of service."

Less than two months later, eight 18-year-old men left the UK for a year's voluntary service in Ghana, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Sarawak (part of Malaysia). Voluntary Service Overseas had begun.

Fifty years on, 32,000 people have followed those first eight men, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka; Vanuatu to Vietnam. Today, there are 1,500 VSO volunteers aged 20 to 75 overseas, recruited from the UK, Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Ireland and India.

Specialist assignments last from two weeks to six months, long-term assignments last up to two years. Work includes health care, leisure and tourism, and agriculture. In 1958, the Bishop of Portsmouth's letter - titled "The Year Between" - concluded: "Is it beyond our organisational capacity to unite these needs?"

The answer, resoundingly, was no.

Philip Needham 76, from Barnard Castle

PHILIP worked with VSO from 1986 to 2006 in Sri Lanka, Gambia and, mainly, China. "I had been in farming for 30 years but, in 1985, decided I wanted to work full-time in development,"

he says. "I had always had ambitions to work in the colonial service. I met a young lecturer who had worked with VSO, we became close friends, and he got me interested in working in developing countries."

His first posting was Sri Lanka - "a thrilling experience"

- working with Salvation Army children's homes, and livestock and agriculture projects. In 1990, he accepted a VSO job in China, first at a pig farm, then teaching animal husbandry and English at a new college. "It was particularly interesting in China," he says. "I enjoyed the challenge of working there. The change was terrific. The country was opening up to the world and we were there, where the Chinese wanted us to be. They particularly valued English speakers.

"To help people, first you have to listen to them.

I think it's so very important to find out what they really need. It's no use going to these countries thinking you can dictate to them. You can't."

Philip went in his 50s. Are older people as valuable as youngsters?

"There is good work done by younger people - but as an older person you have more experience to offer," he says. "In some ways older people are accepted more because those you are helping see you have experience. I think being 40 to 50 is the ideal time to go."

So does he miss the excitement of life abroad?

"Definitely," he replies. "I definitely miss it. But you have to call it a day sometime, slow down and take time for retirement." Philip gets out a short, typed diary of his experiences, which ends: "Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the places and the moments that take our breath away."

Pat Anderson, 59, from Guisborough

PAT was head of Northgate Junior School, Guisborough, before she spent two years in Nepal. "I was ready for early retirement, but I didn't just want to stop working," she says. "I wanted to carry on in education and I'd heard about VSO wanting education managers.

"I applied in February 2005, was accepted, and they asked if I would go the following September.

I hadn't planned it quite so soon, but I did it.

I was offered several places, but Nepal's was the job description that I thought best suited me.

"I'd never been out of Europe before. All I knew of Nepal was that it was mountainous - and I don't like heights! Or, should I say, didn't like them."

Pat had a month's training before leaving, where many questions were answered - and more emerged. She finished work on August 31, and left on September 14. "The six weeks before I went I was really up and down," she says. "I didn't have much time to get my head round it."

She worked in a local education authority office, one step down from the ministry. "It was a very big district, with hills, jungle, flat land and paddy fields," she says. "I was working with their equivalent of school advisors, helping them set up training.

"At the end of the two years there was a lot of frustration - the political situation meant a lot of time was wasted.

"But when I was talking to the women I had worked with I began to realise how much we had helped them. We were able to give them much more opportunity to have their say. I could see we really made a difference."

Pat has two grown-up sons. "I said I wanted to work abroad, and they wanted me to go somewhere they could come on holiday," she says.

"They didn't think of Nepal, but they both came.

They said Good for you Mum', and they were proud of me."

Jenny Search, 31, from Durham

JENNY spent two years in Ethiopia up to 2004 with her then partner, now husband, Neal. She had just finished a PhD and was doing cancer research. "I think the main reason was I wanted to see a bit of the world and experience it as close to being a local as I could," she says. "VSO seemed to be an obvious choice. Although you're a volunteer, you do get a living allowance, which is enough to live on while you're there."

The VSO placed Jenny and Neal in Ethiopia, where she lectured in a new university's biology department. "It was an amazing experience," she says.

"The students were really, really hard-working. They totally appreciated the chance of going to university - which is quite a different attitude.

"I also developed labs with the students, which was interesting as there was hardly any equipment over there. A lot of secondary schools here have better equipment."

On weekends and evenings, Jenny and Neal would socialise with colleagues and other volunteers and explore the country. "There's not a big nightlife - especially for women," she says. "Though I remember when Euro 2004 was on they had big screens in one of the fields in the city, sponsored by the local beer company, which isn't what you'd expect.

"We would go on bike rides quite often - it was beautiful, totally different to how you imagine. Not like a desert at all - very green, very mountainous."

But it wasn't all a walk, or ride, in the park. "As a white person in Ethiopia - sometimes it was quite fun, if you were in the right mood, with kids chasing after you, shouting and asking for money," she says.

"But you couldn't leave the house without getting attention, and that was quite tiring."

VSO cannot always accommodate couples, but Neal was placed in the physics department of the same university as Jenny. "I think it works really well with a partner," she says. "You have got a built-in support system. It also makes a difference when you get back."

* For more information about VSO and details of how to volunteer, log on to www.vso.org.uk