PROJECT TRUST 1994-1995

Another Tuesday morning in the Autumn - another group of 24 fresh faced school boys and girls arrive on Coll. They are known in Island jargon as 'volunteers', but what are they doing here, the Island asks?

Project Trust, responsible for bringing nearly three hundred boys and girls to Coll each year, has had its headquarters on Coll since 1972. At first the offices were at Breacachadh Castle, half built in those early days. Later on Project Trust bought Bousd, moved in for a few years, and then moved to the Roundhouse whilst Bousd was renovated. Another move was made back to Bousd, and finally it moved permanently to Ballyhough once the farmhouse was fully renovated and the Hebridean Centre built.

Over the years many Islanders have been involved with Project, starting with Wendy McKechnie, carrying on through Esther MacRae who worked for several years for us and currently on to Karen Taylor and Joanna Davies, both of whom were recruited locally. Many were involved in other ways, such as Alec and Flora MacLennan who were the first family to take in our volunteers, and at present there are eleven host families.

Twenty eight years later, it is a triumph that Project Trust continues to flourish. In 1995/96 we intend to send more volunteers overseas than ever before to 22 countries including, for the first time, Vietnam, Guyana and Malaysia.

Much of the success of Project Trust has been the involvement it has had with Coll. Now there is a very large number of the population who are involved, in one way or another, either through working for the Trust, taking in volunteers, playing in the band, or even being recipients of help. Although our headquarters are on Coll we also have a branch office in London: could this be the only one of its kind?

There still remains a gap in the Islanders knowledge of Project Trust. They see the volunteers arrive and leave, they know vaguely what we are doing, but what actually goes on in the offices remains a mystery.

The Project Year starts in October, when the new batch of volunteers are safely overseas. Selection courses begin then for about twelve weeks, so that we can assess candidates likely to make a success of a year overseas. Maturity, intelligence, initiative and adaptability are all key qualities we search for. The girl who refuses to eat any type of meat or fish is marked down on adaptability; the boy who does not make an effort when told to dig a lazy bed does not impress us: keeping the bedroom tidy and being punctual gets someone marked up.

It is not only physical work on selection courses: candidates are expected to give two short talks, take part in discussions and games and ultimately remember how to dance the reels they learnt earlier in the week on the final evening.

Selection courses undoubtedly occupy most of staff time until they finish in January. Other tasks must continue, however, such as organising interviews for those about to come to Coll, dealing with applications, and of course, our main job, looking after the volunteers in the field.

The week following the end of selection is spent deciding where to place those chosen. The director has a placings board in his office, and mugshots of each candidate are stuck with blu-tak in squares drawn alongside the names of the countries. Profiles then must be written of each candidate, a task which must be done carefully and fairly.

The annual report should be back from the printers by January. It is a triumph that this important document can be produced locally, the design by Barbara Payne and printed by the Print Shop in Oban. Five thousand are printed and the majority have to go out with individual letters, particularly to those who we hope will support us financially during the year.

Each volunteer is visited during the year by a member of Coll staff and these visits take place during February, March and April. Sometimes two will visit together, a senior member of staff taking round one of the new staff members. Contrary to what might be thought, these visits are hard work. Schedules are tight, there is usually no time off at all, and one is supposed to be a sounding board for frustrations and anger from the volunteers if they have a perceived grievance. Fortunately there are moments when success shines out: such as in the real affection between a volunteer and his or her pupil, or a host saying with genuine enthusiasm that he would like a volunteer just like his present one.

With so many members of staff away, the remainder have a hard task getting the newly selected volunteers organised with the paperwork and information required to get them overseas. Visas, passports, inoculations, all have to be organised early, and profiles and placings need to be sent out to the representatives in the countries overseas.

The books open for new recruits in mid-March. Literature for this must be prepared well in advance because printing takes so long.

In April this year we expect to have an influx of groups organised by DA Tours into Ballyhough. Seven weeks have been put aside for residential historical and environmental courses, interspersed by groups running their own activities. This means more work for the staff at Ballyhough but also more employment for the Islanders involved.

On the Project Trust front, we prepare for training courses which take place in July. We must make sure we have the right information and the right people to put it across. This is far more time consuming and painstaking than it sounds. With 22 different countries, each with its own special requirements, plus a myriad different types of work for which training is required, organising five weeks of training is a difficult task.

The first group of forty to be trained arrives at the beginning of July. There follows a severe test of memory: one might be asked, almost in the same breath, how many pairs of socks should be taken to Japan, how long does a Haverix inoculation last, how does one obtain baggage insurance, how many stopovers does BA137 on its way to South Africa make?

At the end of the training courses a group from Japan joins us for a week. They come from a large school on the outskirts of Tokyo and have done much for Anglo-Japanese relations on the Island, always showing a friendly warm face to the Islanders. 1985 will see the fourth group coming to Coll.

Immediately the training courses are over, concentration centres on travel, those returning home and those going out. The returnees come back to Coll for a two day debriefing course in September. This is an interesting time, seeing the result of a year's work on our part and justification for sending someone overseas. Usually it is a positive experience, but it can be nerve-racking to be taken to task for writing what was considered to be an insensitive letter months ago.

The old year draws to an end at the end of September, which is when new members of staff join us. We will always need young returned volunteers for staff members because they relate to eighteen year olds in a way others cannot, although we have to accept that staff turnover is greater as a result. We lost 3 last summer: James Langdon who has bought a ruin in Portugal and intends to renovate it; Jake Lloyd Smith who has a job as a journalist in Bangkok; and Tom Austin working for Feed the Children driving lorries in Bosnia. And only recently Nicky Smith left us to take up a position with Feed the Children. Their places were taken by Richard Lee, who spent a year in Namibia with Project Trust, Deborah Alexander, who was in Indonesia, and Moya Simpson who was in Thailand.

And so the new year begins again with another group of fresh faced school boys and girls arriving on Coll. Project Trust starts the year as thousands of small threads: by the end of the year they must all be woven into a thick rope. It is the achieving of this which makes the work worthwhile.

Lavinia Bristol