Before Peter Slowe went to university in 1972 he spent a year teaching
English, geography and cricket in Kashmir, taking a gap year before the term
was even coined. “It was great,” said Slowe. “I was doing a really
worthwhile job. Everyone was nice and I felt wanted and useful.”
The thought of turning his experience into a business did not occur to him at
the time, and he became a geography lecturer at Chichester University in
West Sussex.
In 1990 he began to organise EU-funded exchange projects with eastern European
universities, which were opening up after the end of the cold war. “There
was a huge demand for people who could teach English in eastern Europe and I
had no problem placing students who were eager to go there,” said Slowe.
The popularity of the schemes and the opportunity they offered young people to
do something worthwhile, such as helping in orphanages, excited Slowe. “I
suggested I expand the scheme in partnership with the university. But it was
not interested, telling me I was a lecturer and that I had to leave if I
wanted to do something else.”
Deciding to give the venture a go on his own, Slowe took a sabbatical year in
1992 to set up his own business. Later he returned to part-time lecturing
while he got the firm, Projects Abroad, off the ground. It grew steadily and
in 1996 Slowe gave up lecturing altogether. “It was getting to the point
where I had to fly back from India just to give a lecture, which was
ridiculous.”
It was not an easy decision, however. At the same time as leaving a secure
academic career, Slowe and his wife had decided to send their son to a
private school, adding a further financial burden.
Slowe, 55, learnt how to run a business from scratch, struggling to manage
cash flow in the quieter months when few people were signing up for trips.
“Like a lot of travel firms, it’s a cash-positive business because everyone
pays for their trips in advance but we had to learn not to make the mistake
of looking at all that money in the bank and thinking we were rich,” he
said.
As the number of youngsters signing up grew, Projects Abroad widened its scope
to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Today its gap-year travellers help out in
ever more diverse activities such as teaching in local schools, helping
small enterprises with basic IT, assisting the RSPB with conservation
projects and establishing a youth football academy in Ghana.
Sales have risen steadily for every year bar one, said Slowe. Last year they
were £6.8m and they should reach £10.4m this year as the company expects to
have signed up a record 5,000 gap-year travellers. About 40% of sales come
from word-of-mouth recommendations and much of the rest from the internet.
As the popularity of gap years grows, more competitors are springing up as the
barriers to entering the market are low. To stay competitive, Slowe makes
the most of his global contacts, running many of the firm’s business
functions in far-flung parts of the world to keep costs down. “We put our IT
into Romania, our design in Mexico and our admin in southern India. We also
have a fantastic Mongolian MBA who runs our finance with a brilliant staff
of eight from Ulaanbaatar.”
Profit was not the only motive for setting up the business, however. “Making
money was part of my reason for starting the company but I would never have
left my comfortable lecturing job to make widgets,” said Slowe. “I had no
interest in just starting a business. I’m not in it only for the money,
although I’m delighted that people have been offering to buy us.”
The offers have included an £8m approach from a mass-market travel giant, but
Slowe said he had no plans to sell and was concentrating on expansion. He
also aims to boost sales by selling more services — such as flights — to
gap-year travellers, an important part of the firm’s profitability.
The benefits of helping communities in developing countries and the
satisfaction gained from giving young people unforgettable experiences by
working on worthwhile projects drove him as much as the bottom line, he
said.
The benefits to the young people taking gap years were many, said Slowe. They
go abroad and have fun, their CV looks better to employers, but most of all
they broaden their horizons, learn to run projects on their own initiative
and experience other cultures first hand.
“The chance to do a gap year without being burdened by other priorities and
responsibilities only really comes once in your life,” said Slowe. “People
really enjoy it and get so much from being part of a culture and a
community, and living with a local family. It’s really important that these
kids have lived and worked in developing countries. Without it there is a
danger you get this huge fear of otherness developing in our society.”
