After 35 years of work in London, it is important for us to give back to communities who have not grown up with the same privileges as us like free education and healthcare. We have no interest in travelling the world to tick off a bucket list of 1000 things to see before we die! It is much more meaningful to us, for example, to avoid the Taj Mahal and its crowds, and instead get to live and learn from a community different from our own, although we are sure we will also take in the Taj Mahal if we happen to be in the area. The first adventure of our middle or third age will be to spend three months in Gondar, Ethiopia to live with/ observe the life of a small community. This experience will surely add to our own growth especially when we will have so much to learn from the locals who will always be the real experts, and hopefully, we will also be able to provide some help especially in terms of our finance and teaching experiences.
Our aim is to avoid the ‘tourist volunteer’ route – yes, we want to nourish our yearning to give back but we will always aim for long-term sustainability rather than short-term reliance. We thoroughly recommend a free 12-week online course on Subsistence Marketplaces we undertook with the University of Illinois:
Please message us if you know any small remote communities who we would be able to work with in the future.
