PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release: 30th August 2007
Jo Little > T 1-800-352-1793 > E jo.little@i-to-i.com
MEANINGFUL TRAVEL AMBASSADOR PROVES
THE REAL ‘WORTH’ OF VOLUNTEER TRAVEL
Following on from the controversial comments made by VSO branding short term volunteer projects as ‘worthless’, Deirdre Bounds, founder of leading meaningful travel provider i-to-i, is giving critics the opportunity to see her putting her money where her mouth is (literally), as she launches a unique volunteer teaching project in Uganda as part of Channel 4’s latest big budget documentary.
‘Millionaires’ Mission’, due to hit our screens this September, follows Deirdre along with seven other UK entrepreneurs, as they travel to Africa tasked by leading development agency, World Vision, with the challenge of bringing blue sky thinking to development work as they select, invest in and set up sustainable projects in a remote village in Uganda.
Deirdre and her fellow entrepreneurs will be seen over the course of three weeks forming their own fully self funded organisations – showing the usually unseen challenges faced in implementing projects ‘on the ground’ as they engage with the local community.
Bounds comments “To say the show was a challenge would be an understatement but I felt the learning potential from the experience was too big to turn down – both for me personally but also for the public to see for themselves exactly what goes on behind the scenes and the complexities, and challenges faced when setting up and developing a volunteer project from scratch in a country such as Uganda.”
Playing to her strengths and wealth of experience in the meaningful travel industry, Deirdre opted to plough her efforts into converting the old village school building into accommodation to house English teaching volunteers. The ‘Teach Inn’ hotel will provide a base for international volunteers, but will also help fund future development projects in the area, with all the profits made from the venture being managed by the local community. Other projects set up by the entrepreneurs included a women’s support group, water collection system and a crop store.
For Deirdre, the show was a unique opportunity to experience first hand the project development side of volunteer travel and reaffirmed her own strong views on the vital importance of sending volunteers overseas to support sustainable projects, rather than straight cash - whether on a gap year, career break or for just a two week stint.
Having launched i-to-i over 12 years ago on the back of her own experiences of teaching English overseas, Deirdre went on to grow the business into one of the world’s leading meaningful travel providers, training 15,000 people a year to teach English abroad and sending over 5,000 travellers a year to work on meaningful projects across the globe.
The international development charity VSO sparked controversy recently when they released a statement criticizing the volunteer travel sector - urging this years gappers to ditch short term volunteer projects dubbing many of them ‘unworthy’ and ‘spurious’. Instead young travellers were advised that they would be better off simply ‘backpacking’ instead.
Bounds hopes that by watching the work done in Uganda and witnessing the effect a volunteer project such as ‘Teach Inn’ can have on the local community, such spurious accusations will be put to bed and that critics will see that when done well, these projects and the volunteers who assist with them can play a vital role in poverty relief.
She concludes “I feel privileged to have taken part in this documentary with Channel 4 and World Vision as aside from my own experiences in Uganda, I’m hoping that it will send out a clear message and prove to these critics that volunteer projects such as ‘Teach Inn’ can potentially make a real impact on long term development and the contributions volunteers make at projects such as this are far from ‘worthless’.
“I am extremely proud of our achievements in Uganda, it has given us the opportunity to create something which will present real possibilities for the future development of this community, as well as offer i-to-i volunteers the chance to be a part of something truly special and unique – something today’s backpackers could only dream of; indeed I don’t think the village of Nyakasiru is even mentioned in the latest Lonely Planet guide to Uganda, so they’d be hard pushed to even find it!”
The ‘Teach Inn Uganda’ project will be run through i-to-i as a strictly non-profit venture.
To find out more about Teach Inn Uganda visit www.teachinnuganda.com or call our team of travel advisors on 1-800-352-1793.
Ends
THE FIRST OF THE FOUR PART MILLIONNAIRES’ MISSION WILL AIR ON CHANNEL 4 ON 19TH SEPT AT 9PM.
For further press information or photography, please contact Jo Little on 1-800-352-1793 /jo.little@i-to-i.com
EDITOR’S NOTES
1. i-to-i is a volunteer travel and TEFL training organisation based in Leeds, UK; Denver, USA; Melbourne, Australia and Co. Waterford, Ireland. Each year it sends around 5,000 volunteers to work on 500 projects in 30 countries worldwide and trains a further 15,000 people to teach English as a foreign language.
2. i-to-i is a founding member of the Year Out Group, associate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘Know Before You Go’ Campaign, member of the Federation of International Youth Travel Organisations and has training accreditation from the Open and Distance Learning Quality Council.
