Project Trust Selection Course 2011

Project Trust is an organisation that sends volunteers overseas for teaching, social care, journalism and outward bound.

I applied to project Trust as I really wanted to help others by teaching in another country. Furthermore immerse myself into another culture and learn a language. I was also inspired by my Brothers gap year with project trust.

I have never travelled so far on my own before which made me apprehensive about getting to Scotland. However I’m glad I did this journey as it built my confidence and strengthened my independence.  My journey was from London Euston to Oban.

On my last train I met a lot of other volunteers travelling to Oban this gave us a chance to get to know each other. We then all stayed overnight in a hostel to get the ferry in the morning. I went on a 6-hour ferry journey unfortunately at the last minute the ferry had to turn around as the weather conditions were to rough.

As we couldn’t reach the Isle of Coll we then had to use a Mountain Rescue Centre in Oban to do all our activities for the day. We prepared lessons as many of the overseas projects are teaching. In our groups we presented our lessons, mine was based around art as I believe this to be one of my strongest subjects. We also wrote an essay, and had talks about previous projects overseas and what to expect. These activities were done as we didn’t reach the Isle of Coll on time. If we had arrived on the right day we would have done volunteering on the Isle. Everyone was upset about this as it’s one of the main aspects of the selection course.

The next day we attempted the ferry journey again luckily this time we reached the Isle of Coll. I was paired up with my partner and then went to my host’s house. I loved spending time with my host and learning about life on the island. As I live in London living on Coll was so different and many things about Island life amazed me.

I enjoyed my time with the host family however not so much with the other volunteers, as I live in London I’m extremely use to multi-cultural surroundings. A few volunteers made racist remarks, which made me feel quite uncomfortable. This surprised me as they were volunteering to live overseas.

I really enjoyed the activities such as walking up a hill in 60mph winds. Some activities and the volunteering aspect of the trip we missed out on, as we didn’t arrive on time. The main part of the experience I loved was living on the island and getting to know my host and how she lives. There were many ups and downs during the selection course such as transport not being reliable, and spending time with another family and living with them. 

Even though I didn’t do any volunteering as such on this particular trip, I will always be up for volunteering as the experiences are always different and you learn so many new things and gain so many excellent skills. This selection course was described to me as a “mini gap year”. As the Isle of Coll has many similarities to the countries and islands Project Trust send volunteers to.