The Rise of the Mini Career Break

First came the gap year. Then the career break. But now a new travel phenomenon is changing the way workers think about their holidays. And it’s called a Mini Career Break.

A Mini Career Break is a meaningful travel experience that takes less than a month. It might involve volunteer work abroad, be a learning holiday (training to learn new skills) or be travel with a purpose (such as keeping a photo journal).

Career break expert Rachel Morgan-Trimmer, founder of www.thecareerbreaksite.com, says that around a third of career break companies now offer Mini Career Breaks. "We've seen a huge rise in the number of projects which take on volunteers for as little as a week or two."

She’s identified two main reasons for people taking Mini Career Breaks: "The first is that British professionals now want more out of their two-week holiday than simply lying around on a beach. They want to come back invigorated, more confident and feeling that they've made the world a better place."

“The second is that a Mini Career Break is a chance for people to try out an overseas experience without committing to something for several months or a year. This is becoming more common as the average age of the career breaker rises, because they’re much more likely to have school-age children and other commitments at home."

So what should you do if you want to take a Mini Career Break? Decide what you want to get out of it – do you want to help people, learn something or just get out of your comfort zone? Next, have a look at the options (you can search for all kinds of Mini Career Breaks on www.thecareerbreaksite.com) and get advice from people who've already done it.

As Rachel says, "It's much less of a commitment than a full gap year or career break, and you'll have a lot more to show off on your return than a tan and a straw donkey!"

Reputable gap year organisations

One big difference that I've found between career breakers and gappers is that career breakers care much more about the ethics of the gap year organisation they're volunteering with. They want to know why they have to pay, where the money is going and if the gap year organisation is reputable.

We work with all kinds of gap year organisations - charities, non-profits and for-profit companies. Some career breakers are put off by 'normal' businesses organising volunteering placements, but there are a lot of for-profit gap year organisations doing some sterling work with great projects all over the world.

I often get asked how to find out if a gap year organisation is reputable, and I give the following advice:

• ask lots of questions - the good gap year organisations are proud of their record so they'll be happy to be quizzed


• ask to speak to people who've gone with the organisation


• read the papers - a bad company will get bad press


• use The Career Break Site to find an organisation - we're the only one we know which vets our advertisers

Finally, be aware that most gap year organisations are reputable and take good care of both volunteers, and the projects they are trying to help. Click here for a list of reputable gap year organisations.

Customer service

I'm aware I bang on about customer service and treating your web users well quite a lot, but it's something that's really important to me.

What really gets my goat is site owners acting like they really don't care about you. Could you imagine going into a shop, asking the staff a question and them actually ignoring you? It's unthinkable in real life, yet websites do it on a regular basis. I once had the misfortune to build a website for a rather unpleasant client, and we were discussing where the emails would go and who would respond to them. He said 'Oh I don't care about that, I'm not going to answer them'. The site was for a bar/restaurant, so it wasn't likely he was going to get inundated with emails anyway. Enquiries would most likely have been about opening hours, whether they served a particular ingredient or drink - nothing that would require a vast amount of time to address. Could you imagine if he'd taken this attitude into his bricks and mortar business? It's the equivalent of slamming the door in someone's face!

There is a reason for me thinking about this, but I'm saving the story for another blog entry (which will be when I get my emails answered or when I give up in despair, whichever comes first). Watch this space.

Irrepressible Info

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Join the campaign: http://irrepressible.info

Skive off work and watch the World Cup instead

We made a World Cup skive site to help people leave the office in time to get home for the match. :)

You can make a personalised skive schedule. It tells you what time to leave work to get home for the games you want to watch, and you can add ten minutes for getting beer, going to the loo, etc. England's World Cup fixtures are highlighted, and it also shows you which matches are in office hours.

The site also has an excuse generator, to make a random excuse to get you out of work. You can even make yourself a personalised sick note to print out and give to your boss (if s/he is particularly gullible).

The site is here: www.thecareerbreaksite.com/world-cup. Enjoy!

Early Day Motion - sending human rights observers to Israel and Palestine

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel is asking people to write to their MP to ask them to sign an early day motion to send human rights observers over there.

This is the text of the Early Day Motion:

EDM 596
ECUMENICAL ACCOMPANIMENT PROGRAMME OF THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES 14:7:05
"That this House welcomes the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme of the World Council of Churches in arranging for human rights observers to work in Israel and Palestine; encourages Her Majesty's Government to work with intergovernmental organisations to establish a human rights observation force in the Occupied Territories, and to press for an end to the occupation in a just and peaceful solution to the conflict on the basis of UN resolutions and the international rule of law."

If you want to ask your MP to sign it, go to www.writetothem.com and look up your MP. You can check to see if they've already signed it (click the link to 'find out more about...') - the EDM number is 596. If they haven't, you can email your MP through the website, and ask them to sign it. Please note: if your MP is a minister, they can't usually sign an Early Day Motion, but you can still ask them to support it.

Charity - Christian Aid Week

A couple of days ago, I went onto the streets to beg. Not for me, but for poor people in other countries. This isn't because I'm a particularly good person, but because I just wanted to get out of the house for an hour and rattle a bucket on a street corner. I thought it would be interesting, and besides, it was ages since I did some volunteer work.

I stood in Manchester city centre with my big embarrassing red tunic on (it was for Christian Aid), a noisy bucket and a fistful of stickers. This was the first time I've done a street collection and it was quite an eye-opener. One of the first things I noticed was that people are often getting out an iPod or a mobile while they're walking towards you, not their wallet. And if you smile at them expectantly they will look all embarrassed, and then scarper. The second thing I noticed was that charity collectors are magnets for mental people. Stonehenge and Myra Hindley were two subjects that unexpectedly cropped up in conversation, but the mental people gave me money so I wasn't going to argue.

Which leads me onto my main point. I expected people who looked rich to give me money - people in suits, people who obviously had fairly decent jobs. While a fair few middle class people gave me money (and several very generously), I was pretty surprised at the number of poor people who donated. It wasn't just 'ordinary'-looking, working people - I had people who were disabled, people who were apparently very poor, and of course, the above mentioned mental people who I assumed were pretty much unemployable.

Now, of course I'm making snap judgements here, but there is a point to this. Most career breakers, including those who volunteer in the sort of places Christian Aid works, are middle class. Yet when it comes to dropping some money in a bucket in the street, where you don't get anything except a smile and a 'thank you' from a slightly disenchanted volunteer, it's the 'have-nots' who shine.

I thought it was interesting, anyway.