How teamwork helped me to grow up
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from May 1990.
Brought to you by
I was young when I started - 12 or 13 - and felt enthusiastic about it from the beginning; anything to get out of the classroom. But it also introduces you to aspects of life denied you unless you are part of an organisation that offers them. I worked as a coastguard, which was fun and very exciting for a young person.
We go through phases in our lives, and it is interesting to see how primitive communities always mark those phases in a ceremonial way. Modern societies no longer do that, which is a pity. We need contemporary equivalents of initiation ceremonies, to mark the passage from childhood to adulthood. The point about being a coastguard - and at Gordonstoun you could also be in the fire service - was that it was adventurous and exciting and it happened at that stage of transition from being a child to being an adult.
Having the chance to do difficult and demanding things when you are young is important and that is why, when we began to talk about the idea of the Community Venture, I felt strongly that the scheme should include attachments to the police and the fire service and the ambulance service. These can offer something like the excitement of being involved in battle, but without the attendant dangers.
There is a basic instinct in young people to get out and use their energy and aggression. But it is also very important to offer the chance to help young people, who are apparently tough, with the opportunity to discover and test themselves in a different way. On the Community Venture many of these "tough characters" have found that they are good at work with children or with elderly people. The man who founded the school I went to, Kurt Hahn, believed that we should combine adventure and service "to make the brave gentle and gentle brave."
Working as a coastguard was always very adventurous, for me, because we went out on rough, stormy nights to watch from a lookout tower on the cliffs over the Moray Firth. Everything was up to you. Here we were, schoolboys, entirely responsible for the safety of ships passing that piece of coast. What more could you want? We had to stay there, fill out the log, and of course, we were trained in what to do - how to fire Verey lights and get in touch with the ships at sea. It gave you a sense of responsibility, and you were going solo, so to speak, drawing on yourself and your own resources.
Later, when I went to Australia, I encountered the same sense of challenge on expeditions into the bush, where there is every kind of wildlife and you have to find your way with a compass and a map. Nothing is better for teaching you about your own resources than being in that situation. As a student, it was more difficult for me to volunteer because I was slightly more conspicuous. But I found when I was acting at Cambridge, in the Dryden Society, which was an acting group in my college, that it was enormously enjoyable because being in a group meant working together. That made you feel special, because you were part of a team with a purpose. Playing in an orchestra can have the same effect.
The great thing is to be an individual within a team and to contribute to the overall exercise. And that is also true of being a volunteer. Like many things, until you do it you may think "what is the point of bothering?", but once you get involved, you find yourself working with other people and it is being part of that team which is such a pleasure.
Although I can only draw on my own experience of volunteering, which was different from that of many young people, because I was at a boarding school, I think there are similarities for all of us, in the problems we face at certain ages. For those young people who are less outgoing than others, it is enormously beneficial as a way of gaining confidence, and it is useful for the outgoing ones too, in that it gives them chance to try gentler occupations. Very often the young people who are most aggressive and antisocial are the ones who have the most energy to turn into something constructive, if they are given the opportunity. They may suddenly find that they have talents in areas they had not realised: leadershiptalents, for example, and the ability to organise and encourage other people. We set up the Community Venture to make these opportunites more widely available to young people and I find it marvelous to talk to Venturers and to hear their remarkable enthusiasm for the whole experience. They have suddenly discovered qualities in themselves they did not know existed. Even quiet young people, who have been in a shell, and who have found themselves on the Venture and stuck it out find that they have been changed.
Being sent to Australia certainly changed my life. I became more outgoing and learnt thing about myself. There I was, thousands of miles away from home, and I had to get on with it, battle away and survive. Looking back on it, there were parts that were hellish, but the overall memory is of enjoyment. I wasn't in those days, a rebel, or particularly anti-social - I have just become more so as I have got older. I have been talking, for 12 years or more, about making opportunities for voluntary service more widely available to young people.
People rubbished the subject every time I raised it, but suddenly they seem to be looking at it more favourably. Perhaps the time has come? Certainly on the environmental front it is an idea that fits in with current concerns. I believe very strongly that there are not enough means in this country by which people from all walks of life and from all backgrounds can work together for a common purpose.
Without such means there is polarisation between different groups. I believe that there should be means by which some people can come together and find out about each other, and do something constructive for their country. I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't see that as being nationalistic. I see it as being sensible and right. So I would like to see all young people having the chance to work together as volunteers, and even if it is only for a short period, for 12 or 18 weeks of their lives, I hope it will be something on which they will look back as having made a difference, both to themselves and their communities.
