Dangers of the gap

7:00am Friday 27th July 2007

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JUST four months after the death of teenager Georgia French in Peru, her parents are preparing to embark on a remarkable journey inspired by their daughter.

Nineteen-year-old Georgia, a former Oxford High pupil, died in a bus crash on a remote mountain pass in the Andes.

"On Saturday, March 24, 2007, our lives changed forever," recalled her father Ian French.

"We received a phone call informing us that Georgia had been killed.

"She was only two weeks into her gap year trip of a lifetime, between finishing school and starting university."

More than anyone, Mr French and his wife, Pat, have reason to curse the phenomenon of the gap year, which sees thousands of young people each crossing continents and oceans in search of adventure.

What for parents is the cause of months of anxiety and sometimes huge expense, has for young people become a rite of passage, which if not taken before university, is nigh on compulsory after graduating.

Georgia was, in fact, one of nearly 250,000 young people to undertake a gap year in 2007.

Yet a staggering 30 per cent of them will experience some sort of problem or incident requiring help.

While it must be said that the vast majority of problems may be resolved locally, often with Foreign Office or family support, an increasing number of issues are serious and require professional help.

Cheaper flights and rises in the number of young people going into further education, has meant young people head for more remote and dangerous destinations than parents, who had blazed the hippy trail to the Greek Islands.

Higher levels of adventure and travel have inevitably meant more gappers (and their parents) having to grapple with medical emergencies, legal issues and personal attacks including robbery, rape and assault.

Georgia was, in fact, the third young woman from the independent school to have died in a gap year tragedy in recent years. A total of four from Oxford have died over the last two years.

There was never any real possibility that Georgia would shrink from embarking on a gap year.

Mr French, an IT consultant, and his wife, who live at Devenant Road, had always instilled in their children a love of travel and exploration, with the North Oxford couple able to afford to introduce their young daughters' eyes to Africa, on safari holidays, and various exotic locations.

And at Oxford High, Georgia was surrounded by friends brimming with self-confidence and a hunger for travel. In Peru, she had been travelling with two former school friends, Jessica Last, of Banbury and Charlotte Mardon-Heath, of North Oxford, both of whom were injured in the crash.

Georgia's sister, Charlotte, now 22, who went to St John's College, Cambridge, was always determined to travel the world before embarking on her career. She has only recently returned home after months travelling around India and Australia, in what was her third gap trip.

Mr and Mrs French are parents who have witnessed at first hand the joy and fulfilment that a gap year trip can bring, as well as the devastation and terrible blight.

While still in the depths of their personal agony, they have been able to recognise that they are in a unique position as far as understanding what the gap year represents to young people, as well as the terrible risks that it can expose our children to.

And they have now undertaken to use their personal experiences to create GapAid, a new charity that will seek to directly address issues relating to the gap year and explore ways of making the annual exodus safer for thousands of young people.

"I know nothing about running a charity or youth culture," Mr French told me as he outlined his plans at his home. "I'm just a businessman."

What he does have is a remarkable knowledge of the IT sector and close contacts with giants such as IBM, along with big hitters from the world of finance.

As one of the original investors in Oxford's famously interesting QI Club, he has also forged friendships with many of Oxford's most influential figures, including people in the media, showbusiness and even the Foreign Office.

And what he also has in abundance is passion for the project.

"The motivation for GapAid was inspired by my daughter's death. We will never get over losing our beautiful daughter. Hopefully, GapAid will be a lasting memorial to Georgia and a truly valuable resource for thousands of gappers who set out each year."

Mr French is, however, determined that the charity should not be floated simply on a wave of emotion.

He is a grieving parent but the hard-nosed businessman in him remains.

And for him the reality is that being a charity launched by a heartbroken family to help other young people is simply not sufficient to secure its long-term future and success.

In his view GapAid can only become what he wants it to become, if it is perceived as a professionally run charity, with financial backing and the involvement of companies who can provide the technical and administrative infrastructure.

"If we were going to make a difference then we have to have a proper business plan. We are going to run it like a company."

He has been supported in his approach by Richard Last and Helen Mardon, whose children survived the bus crash. They have both agreed to be trustees of the charity.

The reaction of other parents was a major spur in making them recognise that the need for a charity is immediate.

Mr French said: "We have been contacted by many parents, who have either experienced problems or were concerned that their children were embarking on a gap year to countries in the developing world and other dangerous areas.

"These young adults have little knowledge or experience of these types of countries and don't realise the lack of help available when things go wrong."

Mr and Mrs French have already approached the Foreign Office and were greatly encouraged by the reaction.

"They welcomed the idea with open arms. The reaction was 'do you know how big the problem is?'."

He thinks gappers and parents often overestimate how much assistance the Foreign Office can provide in their time of need, which later results in angry accusations and bitterness. The gaps left by the Foreign Office could to a large extent be filled by GapAid, he believes.

For instance the charity would be able to offer travellers well-researched, no-nonsense information about host countries without being shackled by the diplomatic niceties that the Foreign Office must observe.

This means it can give frank information about the reliability and competence of local police, medical services, quality of transport and levels of crime, for example.

Mr French is particularly excited about exploiting latest computer Push technology to send instant messages to mobile phones. It would involve paying a fee to subscribe to a gappers ID system, where people would volunteer information about such things as travel plans, who they were travelling with, medical information and so on.

In return they could receive detailed bulletins alerting them to any problems in the region they were passing through. Similarly, it could enable young people in need of help to 'hook up' with other gappers in the area.

While being determined to set out his plans in a clear-headed way, his mind frequently returns to the beloved daughter who left "so many smiles and so much laughter" and that fateful bus journey that was to have taken her to an Inca trail.

He steadies himself slightly before explaining how she had originally planned to fly on the next leg of her journey, but had met someone who had told her to take the bus.

As it was Georgia could have had little idea about how dangerous a course she had embarked on.

Peru has a terrible record for fatal bus crashes and the road in the Andes could be counted as one of the world's most dangerous. Gun battles between drug gangs and the police were not uncommon along the route. How might she have benefited from just a little local information?

There are plans to create helplines for gap travellers and their families, enabling them to liaise with appropriate agencies.

Mr French is particularly keen to involve leading travel companies and insurance firms. He has been shocked at the number of young travellers who find they have no cover because of the presence of alcohol in their blood, for example. Shaking his head, he asked: "How many gap year travellers, have no alcohol in their blood?"

The profile of gap year travellers has also begun to change. What was once very much the preserve of confident, well-travelled middle class teenagers, nowadays attracts young people with tight budgets, no access to money in emergencies and sometimes with little or no parental support to fall back on.

The Foreign Office apparently terms them as 'the invincibles' on the basis that they head off with the minimum of preparation about what they are likely to face and where they will be staying.

To some young people the very idea of planning and registering with GapAid will seem at odds with the romantic view of seeing the world, regarding it as detracting from the spontaneity of the adventure.

Fundraising specialists from charities such as Oxfam and Sue Ryder mingled with heavyweight entrepreneurs at a launch evening held at the QI Club last week.

Much of the talk focused on how to bring in the donations to deliver the technical capability that the French family is looking for.

At a time when it feels like every other young person aged between 18 and 25 is either planning, returning or away on a gap year, the charitable venture has the potential to touch many lives. Some parents may well come to regard a donation as an investment in their child's future, if not survival.