Helping those that don't need the help

One of our long-held beliefs at Changemakers is that historically there were lots of opportunities  for young people to volunteer, either for CV related reasons or pure altruism, but the young people those schemes  reached were the ones that had the resources to find those opportunities themselves.   It's easy to volunteer for a year at an NGO if your parents can afford to support you while you do it.  You can fund raise for a trip to Botswana if you are surrounded by people who can make large donations.  Young people who apply to be MPs' unpaid interns frequently have Masters degrees, have worked in African orphanages and on Ecuadorean climate change projects.  Where does the average young person get the money from to do these things?  As long as we have a situation in which the majority of our young people just automatically exclude themselves from these sorts of opportunities, that they would not in a million years even address the possibility, then the balance of power will never shift.  We need to open up access to these places and opportunities.  Especially in these uncertain economic times.