A YOUNG woman from near York has returned from a life-changing 12-week volunteering trip to Bangladesh to support a project that aims to tackle poverty.

Eve Headley, 20, of Skipwith, travelled to Bangladesh with international development organisation Y Care International as part of the UK Government-funded International Citizen Service (ICS) programme.

During the trip, she was joined by nine volunteers from the UK, and together they worked with Bangladeshi volunteers to help poverty-stricken communities.

Before she left for the challenge, Eve had to raise £1,500 for Y Care International.

She said: “The work we did encouraged me to form my own opinions about real things that matter in the world.

"The way in which we had to work was difficult. We were living and breathing a completely different way of life, but I’ve learnt a lot from a lot of different people.”

She added: “The work we did in Birisiri had an impact on the community without a doubt, even if this was in small ways such as persuading a few people not to drink alcohol illegally as it is unregulated and therefore dangerous. Or even on a larger scale like helping a community realise why early marriage can be bad for a child of 14 years of age.”

Eve believes the biggest impact the UK volunteers had was on their Bangladeshi counterparts.

“We worked with them every day and in turn, affected their lives the most,” she said.

“It is the Bangladeshi volunteers that the community will remember and these were the volunteers that delivered the workshops we held on sex education, substance abuse, early marriage, gender equality and first aid. It is they that will carry on the work we did over those 12 weeks for more time into the future.”

Eve plans to help programmes like Y Care to be valued as something that is good for both the communities in the long term and to engage people in wanting to help the global community as a whole.