09/04/2020
Travel taken seriously
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How to fund an adventurous trip for free By dubnium Young people have the time, energy and imagination to make adventurous travel choices, but they don’t always have the funds to match their big-trip ideas.
Written by Theresa Sainsbury
Young people have the time, energy and imagination to make adventurous travel choices, but they don’t always have the funds to match their big-trip ideas. And sometimes their parents don’t either. That was exactly the situation I found myself in two years ago, when my then 18-year-old son wanted to team up with a charity to take part in a four-week volunteering trip to Nairobi, Kenya to teach kids in the slums. I could see the zeros lining up before he even dared reveal the cost. ‘It’ll only be about £3,000 mum,’ he said, super-quickly, ‘And that’s all inclusive, safari and everything. And I’ll teach maths in a classroom, to real kids, something I could never do in the UK without a list of qualifications. Just think what a great experience that will be. For me, and the kids I’ll be working with.’ Great experience or not, how on earth were we going to afford it?
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It’s not always easy finding money to find big travel projects © everst, Shutterstock Well, first off, he said he’d contribute. But at that particular moment, he was studying hard for his A levels, so finding the right balance between academic work and paid work wasn’t going to be easy. That said, he managed to secure a part-time gig tutoring maths (the Nextdoor app is great way of finding this type of work – and it’s free), which meant not only would he be bolstering his own maths skills, but he stood a fighting chance of raising a third of the cost. However, the balance of £2,000 was a big sum to find. And it loomed heavy over us. I contacted the chairperson of the charity he was travelling with. ‘You should try and get the entire trip funded through grants and donations,’ he said. ‘What grants and donations?’ ‘Try Jack Petchey and then keep going.’ So, we took the advice, Googled ‘Jack Petchey’ and followed that with ‘How to get grants for volunteer trips abroad’ and. as with so many of these things, one line of enquiry inevitably led to another. There were plenty of dead ends and ‘you don’t quite meet criteria’ moments, but a day or so’s work gave us ten promising leads, of
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which five yielded positive results. The 2018 trip was paid for entirely from donations and my son’s ability to work his maths magic. Once Matt was on his way to Kenya, I sensed there could be a second, third and maybe fourth trip in the offing, so in order to get a head start on the next one, I catalogued everything we’d done, and sorted my new charitable friends into groups:
The geographical one Some organisations grant awards to recipients who live in a specific geographical area, and Jack Petchey is a good example. To qualify for a Petchey award, you need to be based in London or Essex, aged between 11 and 25, and the project needs a volunteering element. But if successful (and most people tend to be) they pretty much guarantee you a £300 cheque. An even more specific opportunity we found was the Thomas Wilson Educational Trust, which prioritises young people living in Teddington. As my son went to Teddington School, we snapped that one up and they were very generous. There are numerous other local examples up and down the country, so get your fingers tapping on those keyboards.
The educational one If you’re at university, search your college’s website or contact your student hub, as there are some surprising offers of money buried deep within faculty web pages. Matt is now at Imperial and we discovered they have an ‘Exploration Grant” available. Although it requires him to put together a highly detailed proposal, it is remarkably generous if he’s successful.
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Imperial College offers an Exploration Grant © shawnwil23, Shutterstock Private schools are another good source of funds, but they don’t always publicise their offers. Contact the bursar and see if there is anything available in your school.
The charitable one The charitable slant is covered by various organisations. The Lord Mayor’s 800th Anniversary Awards is a great example. We were attracted to it in 2018 but missed the deadline (February in the year of travel), so it’s first on our list this time round. The eligibility criteria says it favours 17–24 year olds who have a connection to the City of London and will be taking part in teaching, community or conservation work.
The adventurous one If you are planning adventure rather than volunteering, try Timmissartok. They caught my imagination with their small, perfectly curated website filled with inspiring quotes, and the message that they encourage absolutely anyone to apply for a grant for their thrill-seeking idea. And who knew that ‘timmissartok’ meant ‘fly like a bird’ in Greenlandic?
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There are absolutely no guidelines given, but there is a useful list of past recipients to help you gauge what they are looking for. Alpkit, Young Explorers (Under 19) and the Captain Scott Society all look promising for projects that have a more outward bound angle.
The DIY one Try the ‘Do It Yourself ’ angle by setting up your own fundraising page on Virgin Money Giving. Write a few snappy lines about your trip and circulate the webpage to friends and family. Suggest £5 donations and you’ll be surprised what people might offer. My son gave up Christmas and birthday presents and asked people to donate instead.
The ones that fly under the radar There are some generous donors who keep a low profile, such as the Rotary Club, the Lion Club and the Quakers (although you need to be a Quaker to be eligible). They all have a history of funding young people’s adventures. Again, there is no specific format for applying and it can be difficult to get hold of the right email address (keep persisting), but once you have navigated your way through their hierarchy they are generous with money and have a genuine interest in seeing dynamic young people develop their skills. My son secured two lucrative Rotary donations.
Final thoughts Lastly, three hot tips we wished we’d known before we started: · Put together a chatty style resume (an extended version of the University Personal Statement served us well), because you can cherry pick sections of it to suit most applications, and it will save you loads of time in the long run. · Check the closing dates on absolutely everything before you start. We got three quarters of the way through some applications and then realised we’d missed the deadline. · Triple check the eligibility criteria.
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And here’s the best bit; January is the perfect time to begin chasing down these grants for next summer’s trip. Use the long winter evenings to Google the hell out of every possible option. Maybe you’ll find some organisations we missed? My son’s booked his 2020 adventure, and he’s confident the money will follow. Back to the top
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Celebrating Caboverdeanidade By Murray Stewart The flight to the island of Maio was full. As the tiny propeller plane bounced over Atlantic air currents, I was the only passenger to gaze out with a lick of fear at the mighty mid ocean below. Inside the plane everyone else seemed to have forgotten the sea. All was exuberance, chatter and a The flight to the island of Maio was full. As the tiny propeller plane bounced over Atlantic air currents, I was the only passenger to gaze out with a lick of fear at the mighty mid ocean below. Inside the plane everyone else seemed to have forgotten the sea. All was exuberance, chatter and a roaring laughter. The passengers were young men in polished shoes, expensive trousers and heavy gold jewellery. They spoke in a Creole that was too rapid for me to grasp and I wondered what interest Maio – flat, dry and quiet even by Cape Verdean standards – could hold for them. A few days later I was driving through the north of Maio, mesmerised by its endless stony red plains where the goats eat rock and the people eat goats. I reached a village – a single street of dust, two rows of parched, single-storey houses. ‘This is Alcatraz,’ the driver said. The street was quiet apart from a few of the ragged, wideeyed children who populate the poorer half of the world. Some of the houses were nothing more than bare concrete carcasses while others were painted in greens and pinks and blues and even had glass in their windows.
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From the front door of one of the smarter houses a family appeared. I crossed the street and asked if he minded if I took a photo. ‘Not at all,’ the man replied in perfect English. ‘But don’t you remember me? I was on your flight.’
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My perception jolted and suddenly I saw the urbane passenger, representative of a richer world, gold still gleaming at his neck. And then my world altered again and I saw a poor village, forgotten even within Cape Verde. He must have noticed my perplexity: ‘I live in Holland,’ he explained. ‘I work on the ships… I’ve come back to see my wife and children.’ The woman at his side, uncomprehending, scooped a child on to her hip. ‘How long have you been away?’ I asked. ‘Three years.’ ‘That’s hard.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But we Cape Verdeans – we have hard lives.’
That is one of the paradoxes of Cape Verde. There is a widespread cosmopolitanism that dates from centuries ago, but it lives side by side with poverty and isolation. For generations the young men have gone abroad – to the USA, to Europe, to the African mainland – because the land cannot sustain them, because their families need money.
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Back at home their relatives mourn not just the loss of their own sons and husbands but the painful emigrations of generations before. They mourn the peculiar lot of the Cape Verdean, stranded on outcrops in the Atlantic, abused over the centuries not just by the waves but by many nations. They mourn in a particularly beautiful way which I first discovered on Fogo, the volcano island. I was clinging to the bench in the back of a small truck as it jolted up and down the steep cobbled roads of the old Portuguese town of São Filipe. Every so often the vehicle would halt in front of a house, the driver would shout and a man would appear in the doorway clutching a violin and scramble in beside me. Soon we had gathered the band back together and we careered up into the foothills of Fogo’s dark volcano till we reached the house of Agusto, a blind musician. Inside his white-painted, two-roomed home the men dragged chairs and benches together and I sat in a far corner as the violins made their awakening screeches and the guitars were tuned. Then the music began: sweet melodies and melancholy harmonies. The music was so sad, it was as if the sorrow of generations had erupted in the house.
The Cape Verdeans express through their mornas the sorrow of sons lost to the wider world, droughts, famines and relatives drowned at sea. Their music is exquisite, an Atlantic art form with influences from the four continents that surround it. But soon the sadness was done and there came the lively strains of a funaná. Now we were celebrating … what, I wondered? I knew the answer, though. We were celebrating the same notion that had just made us cry – Caboverdeanidade, the essence of Cape Verde. I absorbed it all in the dim room with its rough furniture and garish crocheted ornaments. Later I stepped outside where the sun was dissolving into the ocean. As
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I watched, the music still playing behind me, I thought: this is the reason to visit Cape Verde. There are fine mountains, wildernesses of desert dunes and warm waters. But what makes Cape Verde take hold of your heart is that rare moment, that flush of empathy, when you begin to understand what they mean by sodade.
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The Light Fantastic By John Carter A major hazard in a travel writer’s life, as I have mentioned before, is the inescapable local ‘folkloric’ performance. I touched on folk dancing and singing when I wrote about that unforgettable trip to Corfu, and the development of the Costa Smeralda on Sardinia. But I have encountered it all over the globe, and often A major hazard in a travel writer’s life, as I have mentioned before, is the inescapable local ‘folkloric’ performance. I touched on folk dancing and singing when I wrote about that unforgettable trip to Corfu, and the development of the Costa Smeralda on Sardinia. But I have encountered it all over the globe, and often it hasn’t turned out as expected. In Goa, we stayed in a relatively smart hotel on the outskirts of the capital Panaji (which for some reason, we were told, was pronounced ‘Panjim’), and spent our days trotting around filming really good stuff. Most of our fellow guests, however, tended to stick close to the hotel and its private beach, as they were overwhelmingly first-timers to India and terrified of what might be encountered beyond the hotel grounds. I managed to persuade one young couple to venture out, telling them they could hire a taxi from the rank at the hotel gate for the entire day for less than a pound, and the vehicle would always be on hand to rush them back to the hotel in the event of any problem. When I saw them a couple of days later, they said they absolutely hated everything, and the only good thing about their day in Panaji was that they had found a wellstocked Benetton shop. It takes all sorts. But I digress. As part of our schedule, we were persuaded that really good material would be obtained if we took the sunset cruise from the harbour. During the course of the cruise there would be folk dancing on deck. So off we went to the harbour where the boat was moored. We boarded, thinking of the fine sunset shots we would get when out at sea. Not to mention the prospect of sari-clad dancing girls and Indian chaps in those glittery tunics which look so good on camera. The sun was diving fairly rapidly towards the horizon, but the boat showed no signs of departing. When we enquired, our guide explained that the sunset cruise was so called because it departed at sunset. Not before. No decent shots of the disappearing sun, then.
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Still, there was always the dancing. So it was something of a disappointment that the traditional dancing on board was Portuguese, not Indian. Strike two. I have a theory that, in the Dark Ages, somebody went around the world teaching everybody the same dances. You can’t deny that they follow a pretty standard pattern of skipping around and crossing hands and waving handkerchiefs, and the lads and lasses, more often than not, operate in teams of four. The girls have to pretend to be peasant maidens or shepherdesses or lovelorn villagers, while the chaps strut about being simple fishermen or farmers or sometimes military types. But whatever tale they are trying to tell, it always ends up with a lot of clapping and handkerchief waving and rhythmic stamping of booted feet. Once, on the island of Minorca, I watched a display of local dances which seemed strangely familiar. ‘They remind me of Scottish reels and Strathspeys,’ I said to our guide. ‘This could be because we learned them from the Scottish regiments who were stationed here when Minorca was part of your British Empire,’ she replied.
Though anybody who has holidayed in Spain will probably have encountered Flamenco, the sort of shows you see along the Costas are nothing like the real thing. The tourist version is usually performed by ladies in tight spotty frocks, most of whom are old enough and hefty enough to know better, and anorexic young men who have taken an advanced course in sulking. What I regard as the real thing is
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encountered in Madrid or Seville, in establishments well away from the tourist circuit, whose clientele are steeped in the tradition of the dances and the music and singing which accompany them. In Catalonia, however, the dance they perform is called the Sardana. It has unbelievably complicated steps and the dancers form an inward-facing circle, arms round each other’s shoulders. It reminded me of the Greek Sirtaki dance, and I said as much to my host. He understood exactly what I meant, and said that many people believe the Sardana was introduced to the Catalans by Phoenician traders, who would have known Greece and its islands very well indeed. So, you see, my theory about that bloke going round the world long ago teaching everybody the same dance might have a basis in fact. When it comes to folk dancing, however, we English are not entirely blameless, as we do have Morris dancing. Some people say it is a corruption of ‘Moorish’ dancing, having been introduced into England by Moorish traders, rather like those Phoenicians in Spain. One summer we trotted down to Sidmouth in Devon to film a report for Holiday, deliberately choosing the week when the English Folk Dance and Song Society was having its annual shindig. Sidmouth is a pretty little place. Like many West Country resorts, its heyday was during the Napoleonic wars, when the gentry could not take their holidays in France, and it has gently coasted along ever since. On our first day, setting up to film some general shots on the seafront, we were accosted by a rather rude gentleman demanding to know who we were and what we were doing in his town. I think he must have been a simple, straightforward busybody, because the handful of people in Sidmouth who needed to know about us certainly did so, and were extremely helpful. Robin, our sound man, said we were filming a report about the new main road that was to be routed through the town. At which the old gent turned puce and stormed off. The pubs in Sidmouth were granted late-night extensions when the folk dancers were in town. This was particularly useful as far as the Morris dancers were concerned. As a callow youth I had thought Morris dancers were all cissies, prancing around with their hankies and bells and little sticks. On the contrary, Morris dancers are, in the main, hefty blokes with serious beards who are partial to a drop of decent ale.
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In Sidmouth, late at night, they would reel towards you, out of the darkness, on their way from one pub to another. And then another. This could have been dangerous had they not kept their bells on, so you could hear them coming down the narrow, dark streets, stumbling and jingling. And singing ancient ditties in broad Wurzel. A bunch of them came into the pub where we were having a wellearned pint or two. Or, to be more accurate, two of them came into the gents’ at the pub, where I was having a quiet wee. I looked up to find one on either side of me – towering on either side of me. The beard on my left looked at me and said to the beard on my right, ‘Here, I think this is the bloke that’s on the telly.’ The beard on my right slowly nodded in agreement. And I thought to myself: ‘Now is not a good time to discuss gender issues.’ We filmed a chap on the promenade who billed himself as ‘Fernando, the Fairly Accurate Fire Eater’. He was very good. So was his little dog. The climax of the act came when he did a trick involving the dog. As it was supposed to ‘fail’ and end with the dog completely incinerated, it caused something of a sensation. There was a group of intensely serious ladies in shawls and scarves performing ‘authentic 19th-century Lancashire clog dances’. We filmed them and afterwards, as they stood fanning themselves and panting a little, I went across to ask which part of Lancashire they came from. ‘Oh, no,’ said their leader in a cutglass accent. ‘We’re actually from Surrey.’ ‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t know there were any cotton mills near Guildford.’ This remark did not go down well, and the Surrey ladies were decidedly frosty from then on. Fortunately, not for long. That evening, after stowing away the gear in our hotel, we returned to the centre of Sidmouth for another well-earned pint or so and a meal in an extremely lively restaurant. Assorted Morris dancers, Surrey ‘mill girls’ and other folksy terpsichores made up the bulk of the clientele. As the evening wore on, the decibel level increased and the alcohol flowed freely. In the small hours of the next morning I woke to find myself sprawled on a bench on the wide road which ran along the seafront. On nearby benches were a selection of Morris dancers and ladies from Surrey who appeared to have collapsed from their evening exertions – but melded together in a most artistic way. On the bench beside me was a comatose fire eater. No, I shall never forget the time I spent in the delightful resort of Sidmouth. Though, believe me, I have tried.
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