GOOD WORK: Volunteers celebrate the success of a career exhibition held for local young people

As a youngster, Josh Jay fancied being a wildlife photographer or an explorer/archaeologist. Then he realised that helping poorer people was where his heart lay. He tells STEVEN RUSSELL about Africa – and midnight phone calls about rats!

WARM WELCOME: Laughter and fun for Josh Jay with the host families

AH, the combined power of nature and nurture. With his DNA and upbringing, it’s no surprise that Josh Jay’s horizons lie far beyond Suffolk or even England – and that he’s determined to help make life better for poorer folk around the globe.

The seeds were planted during childhood. With his parents working for an aid organisation, the youngster spent many of his formative years abroad – in places very much less stable than the western world.

Initially it was the west African state of Liberia, where Josh called home between the ages of six months and four years before the family was evacuated because of civil war.

He has no more than snatches of memories of life there, but impressions of Ethiopia – which came next – are vivid.

NOT ALL WORK . . .The volunteers enjoy a weekend off, exploring the unspoiled wilderness of Eastern Cape's Wild Coast - Coffee Bay, in this picture

Josh lived there between the ages of six and 10 or 11. Home was in the same compound as the school – right in middle of Addis Ababa.

He remembers his friends, life on the busy streets, and the poverty of the capital of the east African country.

“Ethiopia is a very unfortunate country; it gets a lot of bad press and people remember it from the Band Aid era onwards and see there’s been another drought. There are still food crises and other disasters there.”

There are some wealthy people, relatively speaking; “it just gets hit hard when it comes to drought and famine.

GREAT ADVENTURE: Anxious smiles for the Restless Development volunteers while in transit to East London, South Africa. No turning back now!

“People flock from rural parts to the city, but there’s not enough in the way of jobs and food to go round, so there are thousands of homeless people on the streets.

“You’ll drive around and see tented villages. It’s not even at the stage where shacks have been set up – just a tarpaulin against a wall and that’s someone’s home. It’s those sorts of sights that made me want to carry on with the work that my parents were doing, and find my own niche.”

Speaking of which, Josh is just back from 12 weeks in South Africa, where he jointly led a group of volunteers helping to develop the skills of local children and young people. With luck, it should improve their chances of getting a decent job and enjoying a healthy life.

Now he’s looking around at opportunities to forge a career in international development – ideally via a paid job but, while hunting for one, is happy to do more volunteering in a good cause.

DREAMS: Josh Jay is keen on a career in international development

A chip off the old block, then, bearing in mind his parents’ lead . . .

Well, yes, he laughs. “When I say ‘I’m off travelling again’, I’ll tell them it’s their fault for starting it off!”

After Thomas Mills High School at Framlingham, Josh went to Middlesex University for a degree in world development studies with Latin American studies at. It was, effectively, “a big mixture of politics, economics, history, cultural studies – putting them together and seeing how the world has developed the way it has; and how things can be improved for developing countries”.

It was in his teenage years that he started to properly understand the issues surrounding the developing world, and perhaps at 15 that he realised he wanted to work abroad and for international charities.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: Promoting opportunities at a careers exhibition

Graduating in 2008, Josh moved to Nottingham with his girlfriend. He worked as a care assistant for a while and then got a position with the Salvation Army as a homeless hostel project worker. Enjoying it very much, he stayed two years in a job originally seen as something of a stop-gap.

Then he began getting slightly jittery about his university days being two years in the past. “If I wanted to get into international development I needed to do something; otherwise my degree would be sort of null and void and I wouldn’t have kept up the experience.”

Rather handily, a university friend was now working for the youth-led development agency Restless Development. She explained about an initiative it was running called International Citizen Service: a 12-week volunteering experience that allows young people to make a difference to some of the world’s poorest people.

The scheme is funded by the Government’s Department for International Development, with volunteers asked to contribute to costs – though places are free for those on a low income.

CO-OPERATION: Team-building during the South Africa trip

It appealed to Josh. He left the Salvation Army and on September 19 returned to a continent where he’d spent many years, Handily, as a backpacker during his gap year in 2005, he’d also been to the area of the Eastern Cape where the charity has its local office.

Seeing as they were a bit older and that much more experienced, Josh and a colleague were made leaders of the group of nine “international” volunteers who were in the main aged between 18 and 22. They were joined by four volunteers from South Africa upon arrival.

The group headed for East London; quite an industrial town with related issues of poverty not far from the Indian Ocean, and then journeyed on another half an hour to a big rural community called Kwelerha. The volunteers were based in a part called Jongilanga, which means “to see the sun”.

They were put up by local families. Josh and another volunteer stayed in a round building in the garden of a home belonging to a widow called Mamma Jongilanga (or Mamma J, or even Ma J). “She was kind of the grandma of the community,” while its leader was a former Springbok – a member of South Africa’s national rugby union team. The building they stayed in was made of brick and clay, with a tin roof.

Jongilanga, in between a village and a town, consisted of a few hundred spread-out houses. There was a youth centre and two schools, and a couple of churches.

There was running water and power, but only a few flushing loos. Mostly, smiles Josh, it was “long-drops“, which took a bit of getting used to. The roads weren’t good.

But, says the Suffolk volunteer, it was the real Africa, and that was where they wanted to be. Although the country is being held up as one of the continent’s major success stories, there is a pronounced rich-poor divide.

The Kwelerha area had been a little “tainted” by the modern way, but retained many cultural traditions and a sense of its history.

There was certainly not the extent of homelessness in rural areas that blighted large towns. In the countryside, most people were embraced and cared for by the family unit, though locals did have to toil hard and a lot of young people didn’t have a job. But, all in all, people generally seemed to find a way to make life work.

East London, though, had more homeless on the streets, with associated begging, and crime such as pick-pocketing. A large part of the problem, Josh explains, was that people came to the city in the hope of getting a job, but there didn’t seem to be enough for all.

The Restless Development team were “volunteer peer educators” – not trained teachers, but there to help with careers guidance, management of finances and IT skills. These were areas seen as important in raising the chance of getting employment.

The volunteers “taught” in six secondary schools – children aged from 11 and 12 upwards – and a youth centre (where people were generally a bit older).

At the youth centre, volunteers helped teach about sexual and reproductive health, and livelihood (nutrition, relationships, gender issues and so on).

There were job opportunities for young people in the Eastern Cape, says Josh, with a recent push to combat unemployment by injecting funds to oil the wheels.

A lot was covered during the sessions. Careers guidance including looking at “hard” and “soft” skills, and what those skills could be used for. Young people were encouraged to consider traditional jobs such as nursing or teaching, but also to look beyond them – why not think about social work, say, or a job in sales?

There were a lot of ideas about preparing stonking CVs and covering letters – food for thought here, with some of the volunteers thinking they’d better upgrade their own! – and role play to highlight the opportunities and pitfalls of job interviews.

Generally, it was enjoyable and fun, though teaching (small T) was hard at first for some.

Although preparation had been done before the volunteers’ arrival, there were still students who weren’t sure who the visitors were and what they were doing there.

Josh recognises it was probably nerve-racking at first for some of the youngsters, who might not have had much experience of talking to white foreigners – especially a team of nine that magically appeared.

“It took a little while to build up that trust and relationship and rapport, but after a while they realised that what we were teaching was something they could understand; and they enjoyed the non-formal side.

“We used to do a lot of games and ice-breakers and ‘warmers’ with them, which they always enjoyed. We showed that learning could be fun – not just a teacher reading from a textbook!

“Early on, you’d ask a question and have to prompt and push to get an answer. Towards the wend, you wouldn’t even have to ask a question – they’d be throwing things out at you.”

In light of the cultural history of Africa, I’d feel uneasy about going there and thinking there might be some post-colonial resentment if it ever seemed that a white person was going out there to preach “the righ way”. Was there ever a sense of that?

“I think you’ll probably never totally get away from that feeling, because it’s down to history and you can never change history, but the way development agencies are working now is not so much going out with a theory from the West – saying ‘Oh, this is how we did it; this is how you should do it’ – they’re more saying ‘I’ve got technical know-how; I’ve got the resources behind me; but what I don’t know is the local knowledge, the local customs, the local needs.

“It’s a partnership – working together – ‘and whatever I can do, I will do.’”

The “lessons” were non-formal, and very much tried to give the community the help it wanted.

Neither is the volunteering scheme a one-way street. It also teaches young British people about the issues of world poverty, first-hand. Nor does it stop when they return home, as they are encouraged to do voluntary work here, such as helping the homeless.

In Africa, Josh had responsibilities for supervising and mentoring the group, as well as helping with the teaching. There were bound to be one or two moments of tension when a group of strangers came together for three months in a very different environment to what they were used to.

There were a few niggles involving volunteers getting annoyed with the person they were living with, for instance, but vexations like that could be remedied through discussion before they grew out of proportion.

There were other mini-dramas – such as being phoned at about midnight because there was a rat in someone’s house! Rodents were not an uncommon problem. “Well, all we need to do is get you a rat-trap and you’ll be fine,” Josh would assure nervy volunteers. There was no need to call the charity’s office. “It’s rural Africa,” he laughs. “Of course you’ll have rats!”

Our life experiences make us react as we do, of course – and everything is relative.

“When you’re out in Africa, people gripe about real situations. You realise there are little things you don’t bother moaning about. It [volunteering abroad] teaches you what’s an issue and what’s not. Let the little things go. It was interesting to see volunteers learning that for the first time; they came back different people.”

For Josh, the best thing about the trip was witnessing the change in some of the volunteers over the 12 weeks: learning to cope in the new environment and building a great rapport with students.

“Some of the people in the first couple of weeks, you wonder if they’re going to make it. But at the end they don’t want to go home. They’ve really enjoyed it that much and completely adapted to life there.

“When people say ‘It’s a life-changing experience’, it definitely is – if you go out with the right mindset.”

He noticed shifts within himself – “probably not to the extent of some of the younger volunteers, because I’ve done things like this before and lived abroad before, but it did give me a lot more confidence in my skills and reaffirm that is what I want to go into as a career – and that I’ve got the skills to succeed in that.”

Josh flew back in the middle of December – swapping temperatures of 25C for 8C! – and is now living with his parents near Martlesham. England proved a bit of a culture shock “It doesn’t sound like a long time, three months, but because you’re immersed in it, you change massively. Then, coming back, it’s a culture shock in reverse. It’s strange going to the bus-stop and the bus being on time, and being able to get whatever you want from the shops.”

He’s now working as a part-time security guard while trying to take the next step in international development. In fact, he has an interview today for a project co-ordinator’s role in southern Africa.

“It’s not a paid position, but expenses are covered. It is about getting as much experience as I can and keeping going for it, and eventually something will happen.”

Fortunately, he’s not a slave to materialism. “Personal success and development are what drives me, and job satisfaction.”

Josh is also giving talks to potential Restless Development volunteers – has already spoken to a youth media group – and will help out with selection days and volunteer training. He’ll tell people what he thinks they need: “an open mind and expect the unexpected – and set your hopes low about accommodation; anything extra will be a bonus!” he smiles.

Not that such considerations should be seen as a deterrent. Far from it. Asked to name the worst thing about his time away, Josh even manages to reply with a positive. “I wish it could have been a bit longer! I wish I could still be out there . . .”

Web link: www.restlessdevelopment.org

Josh jottings

Born in Hampshire

Parents worked for an aid organisation. Dad was a computer programmer and mum a nurse

The family came to Suffolk in 1999, when he was in his early teens

The organisation his parents then worked for – SIM/Serving in Mission – had its UK base at Wetheringsett, near Stowmarket (and still has)

The Jays lived in Framlingham for about seven years and are now just outside Ipswich

Josh’s father is now leader at Hope Church in Fore Hamlet, Ipswich