A new kind of tourism - voluntourism in Sri Lanka

'It's very, er, pink."

"'Candyfloss', actually." "It's a lot better than slime green."

We stand back, all seven of us, and admire our handiwork. The 8ft-high concrete water tower outside Pidyagama home for elderly men in Galle, southern Sri Lanka, was covered in algae when we arrived this morning; for six hours, we have scraped, sanded, washed and painted under the hot sun and now there it is, resplendent in opalescent rose to match the colour of the dorm block.

This open-air washing area, comprising the tower for the water tank, a rather medieval-looking well, and a single shower, is still stark, but it looks infinitely better than it did.

But will the men be impressed? A small group of residents have gathered on the veranda of the dorm block a few feet away. None of them is a day under 75 and they are men of few words. They peer solemnly at the pink paintwork for a few moments in silence. Their deeply lined faces are mask-like: it's impossible to tell what they're thinking. Then one man smiles broadly and suddenly there is a ripple of nodding. We break into smiles: well, that's all right, then.

We are here - the seven of us, plus six others who are working on other nearby projects - as part of a "voluntourism" holiday organised by the Different Travel Company (DTC), a British firm set up by husband-and-wife team Adrian and Sarah Yalland. It used to be that volunteering was a long-term commitment, but not any more: DTC offers two-week breaks combining holiday time with voluntary work.

It is one of a small but growing band of companies that are responding to two parallel trends: a growing appetite among holidaymakers for "experience-based" travel; and a desire among them to "do something" about the inequalities they witness when visiting developing countries.

The theory is that it is win-win; the challenge is to ensure that the feel-good factor for the tourists is matched by lasting benefits for local communities. Development agencies work with local stake-holders to assess a community's needs, draw up strategies for change and fund projects that are then subject to ongoing evaluation; projects have to be sustainable and carried out in close partnership with local people.

Can a group of tourists united by nothing but their enthusiasm and ability to pay, usefully contribute in a similar way? "You can't save the world. You can't do everything. Some of these projects might be small jobs, but they make a hell of a difference."

So says Steve Cragg, who, with his partner Heather Jennings, acts as DTC's Sri Lanka projects manager. The couple decided to come out for a year as DTC staff after visiting twice as voluntourists last year.

Priority

Adrian made Pidyagama a priority. "I personally adopted the old boys' home," he says; he committed hundreds of pounds of his own money. Over the course of the next year, DTC turned the place around.

It brought in its teams of voluntourists to do simple, unskilled work such as painting and putting up guttering; and paid local contractors to do the more substantial jobs, such as installing the shower and a pump in the well.

The company saw to the repair of the kitchen, the installation of a bottle-gas cooker; the provision of clothing and towels, the painting of the dorm block and repair of the toilets. A nurse also visits once a week. There is also now a television for the common room and a tank to store drinking water, provided personally by Heather and Steve.

"The situation for the men is now drastically improved," says Adrian. Piyatissa Senaratne, the administrator at the home, concurs. "There has been a lot of progress here since Different Travel started coming," he says. "They come regularly - and the men are very happy with what has been done."

"This is a holiday so don't feel guilty about taking time out of the voluntouring programme to do other things," Heather exhorts us. "You are still contributing by spending your money as a tourist." And so we do. In the first week, the group takes a day out to do some sightseeing and at the weekend, after I have returned to Britain, the rest of the group heads off for a three-day trip to Kandy in central Sri Lanka.

The juxtaposition is a bit uncomfortable: there's no disguising the difference in fortunes and expectations between the children in the home for the disabled, for instance, and ourselves. But then again, this sort of holiday is not about escapism. "We like to think that it's challenging people's view of the world, by showing them how 75% of the world lives," says Adrian.

They carried out evaluations and decided to support them. The construction work our group is doing is for a new classroom, to be used in the morning for the pre-school and in the afternoons as a skills-training centre for orphaned teenaged girls.

As commercial organisations dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in some of the world's poorest countries, voluntourism companies have attracted some worried glances. Tourism Concern is about to start research on voluntourism for the first time.

Its director, Tricia Barrett, says one of her prime concerns is what happens to the money such companies make. She is also more generally concerned about the notion of volunteers coming into a place to do tasks that the locals themselves could do. "It comes down to what contribution local people get from the volunteers," she says.

Sarah and Adrian, whose company is a member of Tourism Concern, are acutely aware of those considerations, having come from the travel industry themselves. "We're both committed travellers and have long-standing beefs with existing practices, such as parachuting into a beach resort, contributing very little to the social infrastructure and leaving little behind except pollution," says Adrian.

They had started discussing the possibility of setting up their own company when the tsunami happened. "We used the tsunami to test our organisational skills - to see if we could do this," he says.

Initial plans

The initial plan was to take one group out to Sri Lanka, to stay in a hotel that had been affected by the disaster. But Adrian quickly realised that it would be impossible to "sit on a beach knowing there were people in tents up the road". So the idea changed into combining the holiday with voluntary work.

Having found the right hotel, the next step was to find the right projects. These had to be chosen very carefully. "We don't have training in development, so we buy it in," says Adrian. "My cousin is someone who has 15 years' experience in international development issues, and she acts as a consultant for us."

But it is the company's local contacts, who know the area and can identify the areas of need, who have been crucial in choosing projects. "In Sri Lanka, we rely on people such as Gamini and Janaka - they keep their ears to the ground," says Adrian.

Any organisation dealing with vulnerable people has to tread carefully. The history of development is littered with projects that have been abandoned half-finished because resources have run out, and with ventures that have fallen into disuse because local people were not involved with them.

Partnership plans

Adrian is careful to develop their plans in partnership with local people, and not to take on work they cannot finish. All projects must meet set criteria related to their environmental sustainability and their impact on livelihoods and the community; the company does no work for individuals.

Often, building or refurbishment work is urgently required. "We employ local contractors, work under their jurisidiction and are covered by their insurance," says Adrian. This ensures that the work is done properly, and also minimises any negative impact that the volunteers might have on local employment.

The building work, and any other materials that might be required by the volunteers, are paid for by a levy included in the price of each person's holiday, to the tune of o100-o150 per person. In the 18 months since the company has been doing business, at least o35,000 has gone directly into funding local projects. The spending of that money is then closely monitored - no project is ever given a handout.

But if tourists stop coming to the area, where would that leave the projects? "It's something that's always there in the back of our minds - what happens if you can't get out there?" says Adrian. "We would send money out for local contractors to finish the work. When we take on projects, we take on income streams to allow them to be finished." They are also keen to use local people as their in-country managers.