Projects Abroad

Projects Abroad, the global leader in overseas volunteer projects, has recorded an annual 30 per cent increase per year over the last three years in the popularity of its volunteer placements. The founder of Projects Abroad, Peter Slowe, believes that individuals taking even a short volunteer placement for a few weeks, let alone the more usual three to six months, will not only get experience which will help to prepare them for their future career paths, but will also change their outlook forever and affect the work they do and the way they do it for their whole careers.

First of all tell us a bit about what Projects Abroad does and what gave you the idea to start the business? Projects Abroad sends around 8,000 people a year from the UK and other developed countries to do worthwhile volunteering projects in developing countries. We have our own staff in 42 countries around the world, recruiting volunteers and organising projects. Our job, above all, is to match the interests and abilities – and enthusiasm – of volunteers to needs and expectations in developing countries.

Projects include care work, teaching, building, conservation, medicine and healthcare, and human rights. We also have internships in journalism, law, business, archaeology and veterinary medicine.

I took a gap year myself back in 1975 and I went to India, and I suppose that was the first realisation for me about how this kind of life-changing eye-opening experience could be popular and achieve a great deal if it could only be made widely available.

The next chapter was really when the Berlin wall came down, I used my position as a geography lecturer at Chichester University to organise EU-Funded exchange projects with eastern European universities in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. I saw in my own students the same experiences as I had had in my gap year. Their worlds changed.

Practically, there was also a huge demand for native English-speakers to teach English in Eastern Europe. I had no problem placing students from my university who were eager to go there because Eastern Europe was seen as really exciting and new at the time. Few British students had ever been there.

Soon, we had to start asking students from other universities, and not just for teaching English but also for working in orphanages. Numbers quickly expanded and interest grew.

This was exciting so I suggested to my boss at the time that we should expand the scheme within Chichester University, but he was not interested. He told me that I was a lecturer and that I had to leave if I wanted to do something else. It was then that I took a sabbatical – in 1994 – and it was then that Projects Abroad really got off the ground.

How was the idea for Projects Abroad turned into a reality? It was not an easy decision to leave a secure and enjoyable academic career. I had to stop writing books and doing research, which I had enjoyed, and now I had to learn how to run a business from scratch. At the end of the sabbatical year, my wife Karen and I had a number of interesting discussions about the risks of starting up a business, but in the end she was very supportive.

I had to learn very quickly, for example, how to manage cash flow in quieter months when fewer people were signing up. Like many travel firms, Projects Abroad is cash-positive because everyone pays for their trips in advance, but there is a real difference between the company’s money and volunteers money sitting in an escrow account!

Anyway, the popularity of the whole project increased as we widened our scope to Africa, Asia and Latin America, and started taking not just undergraduates but gap year students, students on their summer holiday, undergraduates, new graduates and also some older volunteers on career-breaks.

Before you set up Projects Abroad you were a university professor, did you have much business experience at that stage in your career? I had no business experience when I started Projects Abroad. I am entirely self-taught!

What were the biggest challenges Projects Abroad faced as a new business? The biggest challenge Projects Abroad faced as a new business was ensuring that our customers, the volunteers, came back satisfied that they had contributed something worthwhile. This was what was important to them and to us – and this remains the case – otherwise what would be the point of doing this?

The fact that I was driven by helping communities in developing countries was the key. Our first objective at Projects Abroad has never been to make money but to ensure that what this huge resource, all these young volunteers, could do was effective and worthwhile. We were absolutely determined to make a difference to schools, orphanages, nature reserves and so on.

This was also a successful business model – almost as a by-product. When volunteers returned, not just with unforgettable travel experiences but with a real sense of fulfilment, that was when they persuaded more of their friends to join our projects, and that is the root of Projects Abroad’s success. Worthwhileness was the key.

Many other organisations have set up in competition to Projects Abroad now, but very few manage to give volunteers the satisfaction of participating in truly worthwhile projects. We make a special point of training (usually in the UK or US) all our key staff around the world in working with local people to find good projects that actually help local communities. The key point is that they are our staff.

It is also an important point that they are our staff. They work for us and no one else. They are not part of an agency seeking profits for itself. Projects Abroad now employs 500 staff worldwide, but even when we employed 50, they were well trained and well-motivated. This was always very important in the development of our company.

Projects Abroad had just 2 part-time staff up until 1997 and now has offices globally; at what rate has it expanded since it started in 1992? In 1997, we sent 448 volunteers to five destinations, this year we are sending 8,000 volunteers to 27 destinations. Our growth rate through the recession was 30 percent in 2008 and in 2009.

The market for companies offering gap-year opportunities has become increasingly in-demand in recent years, what sets Projects Abroad apart from other companies? Projects Abroad is set apart from other ‘gap year companies’ by employing its own highly skilled and highly trained staff around the world and not depending on agencies. The most important thing is to have this committed work force of people who believe in the worthwhileness of the kind of work we do in local communities in our destinations and its importance to our volunteers in their own personal development.

In the long run, we believe that the links that we are creating between people in developed countries and people in developing countries will bring these two worlds closer together. In my generation – I am now 57 – so many people see the developing world as a series of threats, like disease, immigration, wars and terrorism, but to this new generation the developing world is full of ordinary people like them. The long-term effect of this real cultural exchange is unfathomable but I would think it will be really beneficial. It is our sincere belief in the significance of what we do which sets Projects Abroad apart from all its competitors.

A specific business factor which separates Projects Abroad from its competitors is the fact that we run many of our business functions in different parts of the world, which involves very many of our colleagues in high-quality head-office functions as we grow. Our IT is in Romania, our design office is in Mexico, and our administration office is in Southern India, our social media office is in Sri Lanka. More unusually, our finance directorate is in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

In what ways do you believe an individual’s experience from a placement abroad is beneficial to subsequent employers? We know that when students or others participate in our projects, they are adding something really valuable to their CVs.

A specific example is when they apply for a job where there are maybe 50 places but 1,000 applicants, and a middle-ranking employee in human resources has to sift through all the applications. If you have been a volunteer with Projects Abroad, your CV will shine – you can talk about something incredible in an interview – working with nomads in Mongolia, teaching English in Peru, working on human rights in Cape Town, and so on. So it helps you get a job.

As for making you a better employee, I believe that the experience of working under new challenges in places which demand great adaptability and offer new experiences every day make you a more rounded person, able to offer more to any future employer.

Who is your target market? The target market for Projects Abroad is predominantly 18-25 year olds. In reality, they are the ones who have the time, and the lack of other burdens and responsibilities, to take a trip of any sort, including volunteering with Projects Abroad.

However, we do have a new branch, Projects Abroad Pro, for professional people, and this is now becoming very popular. Professional doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, builders, lawyers, teachers find that, with most volunteer programmes, they have to commit for at least a year or two, which would turn their lives upside down. We know that there is fantastic work that these professionals can do even for a short period. We are now getting more and more professional people and early retirees joining our programmes.

We are also expanding our recruitment geographically. In 2002, we started in the

US, in 2004 in Germany, in 2005 in France, and now we have recruitment offices in most developed countries. Australia and Japan are growing very fast, and we are getting increasing interest from Korea, Scandinavia and many other developed countries. Nowadays only about 30 percent of our volunteers are British, about 30 percent from North America, about 30 percent from Continental Europe and the remaining 10 percent mainly from Australia and Japan.

Which are the most sought-after of the placements offered by Projects Abroad?
Our most popular placements are orphanage work in Ghana, human rights work in South Africa, conservation work in the rainforest of Peru, and medical projects and teaching English in India and Nepal.

What advice would you give to someone looking to start-up a business in a similar field? The advice I would give is to innovate. It’s no good thinking of an idea, finding that it’s successful and just staying with it. The market moves on. The world moves on.

Our introduction of human rights projects, becoming the premier human rights volunteering organisation in Africa, was a brilliant innovation. Our decision to market in Japan was another important innovation. Our decision to shift our finance office to Mongolia has brought many benefits.

Lateral thinking and being willing to take the risk of innovating – and of course, a good deal of hard work and probably a bit of luck – are needed to make a successful business in our field.