`I want to do something more meaningful with my life'

`I wanted to go to Asia but not as a tourist, I wanted to meet the local people", says Lisa Cassells, a social worker who has spent the past two summers in India. She went as a volunteer with Voluntary Service International (VSI) and is planning a Nepal trip this summer.

VSI Ireland is part of an international organisation which runs short workcamps in Africa and Asia. Volunteers spend from one to three months abroad between May and September, or over the winter. They are expected to take part in two workcamps lasting two to three weeks each.

For the remaining time volunteers are free to travel around. Irish volunteers join groups composed of local people, other Europeans and, occasionally, Japanese.

Mairead Kennedy, a software engineer, began her one-year trip around the world with two workcamps in Nepal. "I was the only Westerner on the workcamps," she says. "The best aspect was getting to know the local people and to understand their situation. It was really off the beaten track - all the little kids would come up to touch my hair and try to rub my freckles off."

The workcamp projects usually call for unskilled physical labour. Kennedy helped a women's workcamp to build a playground and another to start building a school for the mentally handicapped.

In Sri Lanka, Lisa Barnes volunteered on workcamps to paint schools, unblock a waterway to paddy fields, build a wall around a community centre and clear land for a playground. "But it's not all work," she says. "We got to know local people. Sri Lankans see Irish people as like them - they have a war in the north and we have a war in the north.

"We had days off to visit places of interest in the area and in the evenings we had guest speakers, like aid workers and a Buddhist monk who taught us meditation."

An integral part of the VSI programme is `development education' which begins before volunteers leave Ireland. "VSI is looking for people who have an idea about development issues", explains Lisa Cassells. "It's important to be prepared because Indians, for example, expect you to have extensive knowledge of your own country - the crops, the transport system, educational funding, childcare and so on."

Returned volunteers stress the importance of flexibility and patience. Some people get irritated, says Geraldine Coleman, because they can't adapt to local ways. Her workcamp in Togo aimed to remove rubbish from a stream, but locals insisted on beginning at the bottom and working upstream.

"It's fascinating to meet people who have such a totally different way of thinking," she says. "It's important to relax into it and take them as they are, although it does take a while to fit into the slow way of life."

Volunteering is not for those who need their creature comforts. "Accommodation can be very basic," Coleman warns, "just a straw hut and you sleep on the floor or, possibly, a mattress. You cook on a charcoal fire and eat rice three times a day, or something disgusting like tapioca."

At a recent introductory workshop, volunteers were put off by such stories. "I want to do something more meaningful with my life," says Susan O'Connor, an Aer Lingus worker who is keen to ho to Asia. Sisters Audrey and Elaine Ryan want to do something "which is not as selfindulgent as a holiday." Liz Roache, a volunteer with Citywise in Tallaght, Co Dublin, says: "I've always wanted to ho to India, for the culture and to meet local people."

According to Brian McManus, a teacher who went to India, volunteers often come back with more questions than answers. They have doubts about whether they should have gone in the first place, whether they really helped and about the role of the West in the problems of the developing world.

"It's important to know why you're going and what you expect to get from it," says McManus. "You're there to exchange culture and views. You're not there as a tourist, but because of what VSI stands for."

`Accommodation can be very basic, just a straw hut and you sleep on the floor or, possibly, a mattress. You cook on a charcoal fire and eat rice three times a day'