School trips with an ethical twist

School trips are not what they used to be, at least not if social entrepreneur and former British Army Officer Stuart Rees Jones has anything to do with it. Over the past 13 years the father of two has been wiping out amusement park away days, curtailing coach journeys and eliminating soil sampling geography jaunts.

Relegating rubbish excursions to the trash bins of the past, Stuart, 43, who now calls Dubai his home, has replaced the traditional school trip with socially responsible, life-changing volunteer expeditions. His successful socially savvy company, Camps International, today sends more than 3,000 children a year on award-winning trips across Africa, Asia and South America. The aim? To provide children with a deeper understanding of the world through life-changing experiences delivering sustainable solutions for disadvantaged communities.

“These trips offer kids a level playing field,” says Stuart. “It doesn’t matter where your strengths and weaknesses lie at school – on expedition kids get the chance to develop life skills in an inspiring environment and we often see the quieter children step up as young leaders, ready to take on challenges.

From forest regeneration and orang-utan conservation in Borneo, to building classrooms and teaching students in Cambodia, the trips (that although vary come with a price tag of about Dh8,000) are focused on creating perspective-altering experiences for children of all age groups, something Stuart believes was critical for his own development.

“I left school with very few qualifications but I had a successful career as an army officer and have built a great business because of the experiences I gained outside of a formal learning environment,” he says. “Sometimes kids who are poorly behaved in the classroom and academically poor just need the right environment to excel.”

Commerce plus conscience

The Camps International model, which came to Stuart after leaving the army (“in a panic because my CV was rubbish”) and spending several years, as he says, “dragging people up Kilimanjaro and then dive guiding in Kenya”, is based on a commercial business that makes a positive contribution to the lives of the communities in which it works.

“We are a commercial tour operator,” says Stuart, “but our model is that we build camps for volunteering and school trips with local communities in remote locations. So we build schools, provide clean water, microfinance, as well as support wildlife and environmental conservation efforts.”

Stuart highlights that Camps International is a socially responsible enterprise, a model he feels is the best way to make a difference that is both long-lasting and sustainable.

“We are a business,” he says “and our product – for want of a better word – is the projects. So you only travel to the camps if you are coming to work on those projects. You stay in a camp that has been built by local people and is employing local staff so everything is sustainable and they are operating all year round. We don’t start a project and then leave it.”

The first camp was built in Makongeni in 2003, a small rural community situated on the south coast of Kenya. A place that Stuart says is “amazing, utterly surrounded by wildlife”.

When the company first agreed to set up camp there the majority of the village community was living below the poverty line with little or no access to medical care, clean drinking water or a decent education.

The camp has now been in place for 11 years and in that time volunteers of all ages have made numerous positive changes to the lives of the local community. Their local school, for example, that previously offered an education to just 150 pupils now has purpose-built classrooms providing schooling to 800 children. “Our plan was to rebuild the school because when we turned up there the kids were just studying under trees,” says Stuart. “They had terrible problems with jiggers, which are worms that bury into the foot. So we built the school, we’re providing the teachers with accommodation, we’ve sorted out the jigger problem and put in concrete floors, desks and materials.”

Nonetheless Stuart is quick to point out that they haven’t always got it right first time. “Despite all our efforts we weren’t getting better exam results. Fundamentally that needs to improve so the kids can go on to higher education, get better jobs and that closes the cycle.

Constant balancing act

“It’s a constant balancing act of not being a crutch,” explains Stuart, “but equally providing opportunity. The camps are like a hotel and therefore they need to run efficiently cost effectively, and the right safety and food standards are paramount.”

He adds, “It’s not just about the needs in the community; we’re not Médecins sans Frontières. We are dealing with minors and I am loco parentis for every kid so there’s a huge checklist of things that I have to make sure are in place. ”

With Stuart’s military background, he is certainly the man for the job when it comes to locational risk assessment. As a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Britain, he was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Artillery and served for more than seven years, rising to the rank of captain. He spent a tour in Bosnia.

“Security is in the blood from my military background,” he says. “We’re driven, disciplined and we don’t cut corners – we’re the guys you want looking after your kids abroad, fundamentally.”

He adds, “Witnessing some pretty nasty experiences has given me a tangible sense of consequence regarding how things can go wrong. The result of that is that our safety systems are now world-class and we don’t run any activity that I wouldn’t put my own daughters through.”

It is that drive for safe, rewarding experiences that has led the Camps International team to develop a long and thorough process that is put into place before they set up shop in any deprived community. “The average time we spend looking at the feasibility of a camp location is about one year,” Stuart says.

“We start with a continent and narrow it down to a country.”

Widening its reach

“We established our latest international office in Dubai due to the increasing demand for our trips from schools, companies and individuals from the region,” he says.

“Dubai is a great hub providing easy flight access to many of our camp locations.”

So far they have safely transported more than 1,500 students from the Middle East to over 15 destinations worldwide

“We have brought the British expedition standards here,” he says.

“It’s about getting the right quality and safety benchmarks and the right learning outcomes, and when you combine that with philanthropy you get an amazing mix.”

That view is illustrated by this young volunteer, Sam Lewry, from Dubai, who travelled with Camps International to Kenya last summer,

“This was an amazing life- changing experience,” she says. “Kenya really changed my opinions on life and made me understand more about the world and just how different it can be.

Ceri Jones, who was on the same trip, says, “I had such a fantastic time! I met so many interesting and inspiring people, and have made lifelong friends. I am so humbled by the whole experience, and feel blessed I was able to help change someone’s life, even just by a fraction. Never mind recommending it; I want to go again!”

If you’d like to send your children on a volunteer expedition, contact Stuart Rees Jones at www.campsinternational.ae