: This year is Raleigh's 21st birthday, and it started as Operation Drake, a 'tall ship' that was restored by young people, crewed by young people and taken around the world. It operated on the same principles that we follow now; it gave young people the chance to work on exciting environmental and community projects, as well as having an adventure along the way.

Our focus is on youth development; they go away from home and put themselves in a challenging environment, but it is always a safe environment.

So we had Operation Drake, and added another ship, which became Operation Raleigh, and the person who set it all up was a real character called Colonel John Blashford-Snell, who is still involved, and has been a tremendous support to me. We became land-based, but Raleigh continues to pursue the same youth leadership and development programme, and is still looking at exciting projects around the world. I started with Raleigh just a year ago.

: I started as a nurse, then went to university, worked in the Health Service, and then joined an organisation called the King's Fund, which looked at health and social policy. After that, I joined what was then Coopers and Lybrand, as a consultant, then a health consultancy, the Office for Public Management.

Then, I was chief executive of a charity called Broadcasting Support Services, after which I took a year off and travelled with my husband. Then I had a year in the Home Office as deputy director in the anti-social behaviour unit, and from there I joined Raleigh.

: Very much so. Sadly, in the UK we have a lot of young people dropping out of education, and a significant number of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now, that's not an excuse for bad behaviour, but there all sorts of circumstances these young people find themselves in: parents that don't care, a lack of role models, and sometimes parents who are involved in drug dealing. How do children grow up in that environment? Some of the reasons young people go off the rails are quite understandable.

Within the Home Office, I was looking at environmental crime and I also led on youth crime, and unfortunately, found that a lot of the young people who are perpetrators of crime are also victims of crime. Of course, not all of the people involved in anti-social behaviour are young; there are many older people who behave pretty badly as well.

: The oldest person that an anti-social behaviour order has been taken out on was 85! But seeing some of the circumstances that young people had to grow up in made me think that I had to do something about it, and the opportunity to work at Raleigh came along. Personally speaking, I am very driven by the programme for the socially-disadvantaged that we run.

Of the socially-disadvantaged, Raleigh works with about 400 young people, and of that number, about 130 will actually go on an overseas expedition. So, we do a lot of work in the UK, and we will generally work with these young people for anything from a year to 18 months, sometimes longer but not often. Part of the preparation for a young person to go on an expedition is to go through what we call a Raleigh Outdoor Activity Residential, or ROAR programme.

But many more of the people going on expeditions overseas are students taking a gap year, before or after finishing university, or people taking a break from work, about 400 of them, so you are looking at about 530 altogether. We also recruit international venturers, and there are usually a couple of hundred of them.

Yes, I did start as a venturer, but long before that, as a result of having 'screwed up' at what we then called polytechnic ? they're all called universities now ? I needed a job and found myself working for British Rail sweeping platforms.

I did have a number of lucky breaks working for BR, and got on to a HR (human resources) management training scheme, and that's where I first came across Raleigh. At that time, the railways really saw the value of making the Raleigh expedition opportunities available to personnel.

So I went on an expedition to Sabah as a venturer, and came back to the railways for another four years, making 11 years in all. I finished up as training and development manager for the railways, and I was there through privatisation. Then I was in the fortunate position of being able to take a year off, and I thought I would be bored with sight-seeing, so I wondered if Raleigh would take me back as a member of staff, and to my surprise, they did, as project manager in Sabah.

: That was in 1996, but I was volunteer staff then. I loved that, and must have done all right, because I was invited back as deputy expedition leader in 1997, still as a volunteer, back in Malaysia. In 1998, a full-time position became available for a country director.

Raleigh needed someone who knew Borneo, and thankfully I did. I ran an expedition to Brunei and Sabah, and I thought I was going to be in Sabah for the duration, but we pulled out of Sabah, which we do from time to time in countries, because we have limited capacity.

I went to set up in Ghana, and ran four expeditions there; went to Belize for a year, ran two expeditions there; back to Sabah in 2002, set Sabah back up and ran an expedition there, altogether 12 expeditions, and over six years later, I am still working with Raleigh, the last two as business development manager.

: Well, the most important thing is that the countries are safe ? safety is the first priority. It might be fantastic to work on the northwest frontier of Pakistan, but not right now, we would turn that down. So, it's got to be safe ? we've got 150 sets of parents, families and friends who are counting on us to make sure that the people have an awesome development opportunity, and a great time, but that it's going to be done in a safe way.

There also has to be project work, because the development is through the project work. If there's a really worthwhile project, that will motivate the venturers, so there has to be a demonstrable need for community projects, a need for environmental projects, and some pretty decent adventure, because those are the three themes that everybody on expedition will get a taste of.

We have to have partners in the countries, international or local NGOs, and we have to be comfortable that we can actually work in the really remote and rural areas of that country, that we can get people safely from A to B, even if the last three hours is down a dirt road, or if we have to trek in to a community.

: The first thing to say about any project is that it's got to come from the community, they have got to really want it. It's also got to have the backing of the local authority and the central government. For example, I recently visited Namibia, and the community project involved building a school up near the Angola border, in an incredibly remote place called Epembe.

The school was for a rural area, within which there were a number of small villages. The existing 'school' was a tent which was literally falling apart. So Raleigh went in there, and built an excellent two-room brick school, and we had the whole community coming out to help, people from miles around, who were living in mud huts with straw roofs.

I talked to the village leaders, through an interpreter, and the villagers were so proud of this school, and felt that it was really a mark of respect for them, and that the school would become the focal point for the community, not just for the children, but also a community hall where people would meet; so it took on much greater significance.

: (Laughs) The logistics on a Raleigh expedition are unbelievable! The way it works is that the country director, in country long before the expedition, talks to the government and also the NGOs operating in the country ? and this example is of a solid community project here, we also have environmental projects ? about the developmental needs of the country, usually educational, health or hygiene.

The country director will then go and find a partner, which could be the Ministry of Health or Education, who will have a programme of school or clinic building, or the partner could be an NGO like World Vision or Action Aid, who have a programme of community infrastructure development.

We put our faith in our partners; we know that World Vision, say, has people on the ground who are working with the community on a daily basis, and what the priorities are in different communities. We also know that the community will work side by side with the Raleigh team, and provide sustainability, because when Raleigh leaves, the community will continue to maintain that building, and the ministry will have promised a couple of teachers for the school.

: The partners will provide the materials; Raleigh provides a really motivated and enthusiastic team, including young Namibians. Twenty per cent of an expedition will be young people from the host country, 20 per cent will be less advantaged people from the Raleigh programme in the UK, 20 per cent will be young people from outside the UK or the host country, which is where young Bermudians would come in, and 40 per cent will be students on gap year looking to do something more constructive than just a holiday trip. That's where Prince William came in!

But the country director will firstly go and see if it is logistically feasible, look at all the safety aspects and risk assessments. If I needed to get a helicopter in urgently, could that be done? What about water, animals, any local risks? We have a check list, but the country directors are given training so that they know exactly what they have to do. Reports are coming back to London and we are taking a look at them there: casualty evacuation plans, risk assessment, etc.

: That depends on the relationship you have with the people in the country; it could be as little as three to six months, if the relationships are ongoing. We have a cycle of expeditions that leave throughout the year, but the country director is there full time, and they have built up a lot of good relationships with partners there, so they will know in, say, Namibia, the programme of schools we can get involved in.

Ultimately, the decision is Raleigh's, so we have got to make sure all of the safety and other aspects are in place; the partners are usually knocking on our door asking us to do projects. The country director will really kick into action, say, three months before the expedition starts.

: Our current budget is about ?3.5 million, almost half from the young people who go overseas, who organise fund-raisers or otherwise find about ?3,000, being their share of the cost of the three-month expedition, and the cost of the flight.

We do fund-raise to cover some of the costs but we also get money from different UK Government programmes, like Job Centre Plus, to help young people who have dropped out of education and haven't got a job get back into employment.

We also get money from the European Social Fund, money available across Europe for areas that are considered 'high deprivation', and they have a programme focused on young people. With the youth-at-risk programmes, we rarely get full funding, so we generally have to match-fund in some way, either in money or in giving our time.

We fund-raise about ?600,000 of our total budget of ?3,500,000, much of it from trust funds set up for youth development, but we do get individual donors.

: The most important thing is that it is at the right point of the young person's development. Someone may have had a long and painful journey through a still young life, but have made tremendous progress, and in six months be ready to go on an overseas expedition. But some young people take a lot longer.

They all go through the UK programme, and we wait until we think they are ready. Some of those young people have never succeeded at anything, they have never had someone say 'well done', and they have low aspirations; the last thing we want to do is set them up to fail.

: No, we expect them to fund-raise enough for their kit and their inoculations, between ?500 and ?1,000. In the UK, and as Michael (Spurling) has introduced here, we have a big programme to help people fund-raise, a lot of expertise in Raleigh, and a lot of people who have been on expedition who are willing to be helpful to young people. We also run fund-raising events like the Brecon Challenge. Michael had heard about Raleigh when he was in Hong Kong, and came to see me and to visit a friend, and he volunteered to take on RIB. He saw that problems were starting to surface in Bermuda which could be helped by what we do.

He had been in Hong Kong for ten years, and was surprised by some of the problems he found when he came back here. Being the sort of person that he is, he wanted to do something positive. We had a very good chat in London, and he mulled things over, and when we met again, it started to take shape.

Originally, it was only going to be about finding some young people to join our expeditions, but gradually it became clear that we could have a youth development programme like in the UK.

: No, not really, the sorts of temptations that are there for young people were there when I was that age, and are present in every community, but unlike in my younger years, the drug culture is rife everywhere.

That has done so much damage, certainly in the UK, where alcohol is also a growing problem among the younger generation. And all children are subject to the pervasive influence of television, and I am not saying that it is the root of all problems, but it does often lead young people to have high and perhaps unrealistic expectations of how their lives should be, and the reality is very different.

: On Saturday, at the Bermuda Red Cross building, we met young people from Berkeley and CedarBridge schools, and parents, teachers, and mentors. The schools have done a lot of work identifying the young people who could benefit, and explaining to them what this is all about.

Michael and his team had already done an incredible amount of work behind the scenes. He has got so many supporters, and he has galvanised people to talk about Raleigh. He has already got the Ministry of Community Affairs and the Ministry of Education involved, and we met with Community Affairs Minister (Dale) Butler, Director of Youth and Sport Anthony Roberts and Permanent Secretary Derrick Binns.

Government is sponsoring three venturers, one from each of their three community centres, and a volunteer staff member. We will meet Minister (Terry) Lister today. We also met Michael Stowe, executive officer at the National Training Board, which will be involved in career development after the young people return from the expeditions.

We have meetings on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and, of course, on Tuesday we have the launch party at Government House from 6 p.m. to 7.30. It was wonderful that (Governor) Sir John and Lady Vereker offered to allow us to hold the launch party there, and it will give all of the participants a chance to meet, and give us a chance to thank all of the people who have offered such generous support. But the focus will be on the young people who are going on the expeditions, and it will be their opportunity to say what it will mean to them

: The sponsorships do seem to be going well, and no, there is no real upper limit. We should be able to take as many as can be found sponsors for. But we always stress that the venturers have to make their own contribution.

They will have to find some of the money required, and will undertake months of pre-expedition training, but one of the most important things to get across is that the expedition is not the end of it. All the young people have been asked what kind of project they would like to get involved in on their return.

That, in effect, is when the young people get a chance to show the leadership and team-work skills they have learned in the programme, and to encourage other young people to come forward. We want them to get involved, and taking charge of it.

: It's about young people inspiring other young people. Raleigh is all about the principle of volunteering, and of putting something back into a community, both overseas and when you get back, into your own community, into Bermuda.