Concern at rising cost and limited use of projectsChecklist planned to help young choose best tripsBlog: Should gap years be for fun?

Gap year teenagers preparing to pay out hundreds of pounds to teach street children in Dhaka or rescue sea turtles in Costa Rica may be better off simply backpacking rather than taking up "spurious" and costly voluntary work in developing countries, a leading charity warns today.

As thousands of young people await their A-level results this week, the international development charity VSO suggests the growing pressure to volunteer overseas during a gap year can be damaging both for "gappers" themselves and for the communities they work with.

The so-called "voluntourism" phenomenon has spawned ill-planned schemes that leave young people out of pocket - sometimes by several thousand pounds, even excluding the cost of flights to their chosen developing country - and do little to provide sustainable and well-targeted help for local communities, VSO claims.

Judith Brodie, director of VSO UK, said: "Spending your gap year volunteering overseas has become a rite of passage for young people and the gap year market has grown considerably.

"While there are many good gap year providers, we are increasingly concerned about the number of badly planned and supported schemes that are spurious - ultimately benefiting no one apart from the travel companies that organise them.

"Young people want to make a difference through volunteering, but they would be better off travelling and experiencing different cultures, rather than wasting time on projects that have no impact and can leave a big hole in their wallet."

The charity's warning is the latest salvo in its criticism of the overseas volunteering sector of the booming gap year industry, which now sees around a quarter of young people take a gap year at some time between 18 and 25.

VSO has warned that gappers risk becoming the "new colonialists" if attitudes to voluntary work in the developing world do not change, accusing gap year companies of increasingly catering to the needs of young people seeking to combine a little worthiness with a lot of travel, rather than the communities they claim to support.

The gap year has frequently been criticised for being the preserve of over-privileged middle-class teenagers subsidised by mum and dad as they sample a few weeks' conservation work on a Pacific reef before joining a well-trodden, hedonistic backpacking trail documented in breathless emails home.

The most fleeting scan of internet sites offering gap year volunteering opportunities reveals both the attempts to appeal to teenagers' desire to mix charity and travel, and the high price often charged.

"Teaching in a socially and economically disadvantaged area of Rio de Janeiro - minutes from the glorious beach, but a million miles from luxury - is eye-opening and surprising," offers one company, which also charges £1,382 for the chance to participate in a two-week "African savannah project" in Swaziland or £531 for a fortnight "teaching English to street kids in Peru".

A review of gap year provision commissioned by the government from Andrew Jones at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2004 found more than 800 organisations providing overseas volunteering in 200 countries, with an average fee ranging from £500 to £2,000 - sums now exceeded in some cases.

Hannah Saunders, 19, from London, paid £1,100 - excluding flights - for two months teaching children in Pune, India, on a placement run by a commercial gap year firm. She said: "I didn't have any training or preparation from the organisation before I went, and they didn't expect me to have any qualifications.

"When I arrived, although the project did fantastic work, they didn't know I was coming or what to do with me. I didn't have enough experience of work to know how to handle that at first, but in the end I asked them if I could work with small groups of children and things did improve. But it would be much better to have better liaison with the project while you are still at home so you can create links and work out what they need you to do."

To help determined young volunteers sort the well-run companies from those more concerned with making a quick buck, VSO is publishing a "gap year checklist".

It recommends gappers ask whether they will be given a "defined role and purpose"; whether they will meet face to face with their provider and attend a selection day to assess their suitability for different opportunities; what sort of training and support will be available; and why they will have to pay if their contribution will be of real value.

Richard Oliver, chief executive of the Year Out Group, set up seven years ago and now representing 36 gap year companies which all sign up to a code of practice, said voluntary work could still offer young people a more enduring experience of a country than travel alone, but agreed teenagers should take time to choose a reputable firm and a placement matching their own skills and interests.

"The message is, do your research," he said. "If you do that, or go through one of our companies, then you have got an excellent chance of being a round peg in a round hole and doing some really valuable work."

Mr Oliver said that the best test for teenagers was to ask to be put in touch with somebody who had recently returned from the same placement with the same company, or have their parents speak to the parents of a previous gapper. "It is no good emailing - it has got to be a telephone call at the least."



Trip of a lifetime for millions

From the preserve of a privileged or deeply adventurous few some 20 years ago, gap year travel has boomed in the UK to become almost the norm, spawning companies promising to send young people on the trip of a lifetime.

Figures on the industry remain sketchy, but market researchers Mintel valued the worldwide market in gap year travel at over £5bn in 2005, predicting a rise to £20bn by 2010.

That annual growth rate is around twice the rate for global tourism trips, prompting Mintel to forecast an estimated 2m gap year trips each year, with travellers spending an estimated £11bn. Gauging the scale of the UK market is tricky, though Britain has the most developed supply of gap year operators and demand is expected to stay high, according to Mintel.

Richard Oliver, chief executive of the Year Out Group of 36 established gap year companies, calculates that a quarter of each cohort of 18-year-olds will have taken a "genuine" gap year (as opposed to treading water while they retake A-levels or decide on a career) by the time they hit 25. "The proportion taking gap years really shot up in the early 1990s," he says, "and flourished some eight or nine years ago."

There has been some levelling off among the proportion of young people taking off for a year of backpacking in Thailand or digging wells in Malawi, but the market has continued to expand with the rise of the mid-career and even post-career gapper.