Sarah Hitchcock  "opportunities for young people"

_I was at Tallis from 1996-1998, so just at the sixth form, but mum used to be a teacher there, so I felt like I had been there for much longer as I went on school journeys and got to know lots of people! After a year out of travelling and working a bit, I went to Sussex University to study History of Art and English. I loved the course and living in Brighton. After that I decided I'd like to live abroad for a bit, and trained to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL) and went to live in Barcelona.
I absolutely loved living in Spain, and got to learn Spanish too.
When I came back to the UK, I decided I wanted to keep doing international work, so I applied for work at the British Council, which has offices all over the world. The British Council has loads of different programmes to bring international work to schools and universities, send artists and musicians to other countries, training young people in different countries to be football coaches etc, so there were lots of different possibilities.

I focussed on work which involved opportunities for young people, and worked on different youth projects while I was there. After being at the British Council for 6 years, I moved to VSO (voluntary services overseas) which is also an international organisation, and my current job title is Youth Programme Development Manager. I work with different countries to set up youth volunteering programmes in those countries. Our main programme is called International Citizens Service (ICS), which gives opportunities to young people aged 18-22 to live abroad for 3 months and volunteer in community organisations in that country. It's a really exciting programme to work on and there's always lots going on. I love working with so many different countries and also have been lucky enough to travel a lot with the jobs that I have done. For anyone interested in learning about this programme, or applying to go on it, our website is www.globalxchange.org.uk

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