Voluntary work in the Gambia

Edmund Woodfield says his summer of voluntary work left a huge impression on him - and the people his team helped.

''Dozens of women and children came from a local village called Jigimar to welcome us.''

There have been several articles on Your Say debating the merits of a gap year: is it a worthwhile way to spend your efforts and money or is it just a way of making yourself feel good? I had these worries on my mind when I made a one month trip to the Gambia in August, after I had done my GCSEs.

Katie Dunn would argue that the £1,500 I had to raise to go to the Gambia would have been far better spent if it went directly to a charity like Oxfam. But would this have had the same effect?

In total, there were 13 people in the team that went out to the Gambia - four adult leaders and nine teenagers. We stayed in a fairly large town called Farafenni and our time was divided between practical work, ie decorating the guesthouse of the school where we were staying, taking part in children's activities and visiting nearby villages where the local church was going to be spending the money we raised for the benefit of the communities.

It seemed like the worry in my head was put to rest the first evening that we spent in Farafenni. Dozens of women and children came from a local village called Jigimar to welcome us. Last year's team had had such a profound impact on their lives that they felt they had to show their appreciation to us by giving us what must have been an extremely generous gift from them - a big tub of cold drinks and a few packets of food. One woman even offered to wash all our clothes for free.

This display of deep gratitude - despite the fact that we ourselves had not even done anything for them yet - was proof that our time in the Gambia would have a huge benefit for places like Jigimar. They had been given some land and a well by the previous Crusaders team and to them this was no small thing. Though they knew that this time we had come mostly to help other villages, they were overcome with emotion at our presence. This sentiment was repeated by other villages when we visited the places where most of our money was to be spent.

What occurred to me most when visiting these villages was that people didn't thank us so much for giving them the money to improve their lives; they thanked us for caring enough about these people who we didn't know to come all the way over to the Gambia to help them. People living in poverty don't always think of money as their greatest need. What some care most about is having the sense that people are concerned for their situation and determined to do something about it. Personally going to a developing country gives people this assurance.