Give me a break

¿Habla Español?

Denise Waller, housing officer at Impact Housing Association, based in Allerdale, Cumbria, took a three-month sabbatical to learn Spanish and go travelling between May and July.

After school, I went to university, got married, and have been a housing officer in different councils since 1984, so I’ve never had much time to myself. I was at Impact for five years after it transferred from Allerdale council then I decided to take some time out.

I’d been doing evening classes in Spanish for two years and I wanted to give this a bit of a boost. Financially I was able to afford a sabbatical and I thought, as I’m nearly 50, I might as well do it now. A sabbatical has never been available to me in previous jobs – it’s not something that was done at councils. My manager and my colleagues were very good, even though it caused some disruption because they had to organise temporary cover.

For the first month I went to Madrid on my own and studied at a language college, learning Spanish and going on tours of cultural places. I’ve never really spent that much time alone before – let alone abroad.

Going to Spain didn’t have a lot of relevance for my work, but it has definitely made me more confident. You realise you can do lots of things: I had to find my own accommodation, fly out on my own and live by myself in a country where I didn’t speak the language that well.

I then met up with my husband in France and we spent two months camping there and in Italy. We are keen cyclists and managed to tie the trip in with the Tour de France. It was interesting to mix with different people. In my job you have to deal with a lot of conflict so it’s good to be reminded that people are nice and many will take the time to help you even when you don’t speak their language.

We are doing a lot of training at Impact on diversity at the moment. Cumbria doesn’t have a lot of minority-ethnic people, but there are many people who don’t hear or see very well, and people with learning difficulties. Because you’ve been in a situation where you don’t speak the language, it gives you more patience and understanding when people can’t explain things as quickly as you want.

I have now started an Open University course in Spanish in my spare time and hope to get a diploma. I feel you need to have interests other than your work and have to keep challenging yourself.

I don’t think the sabbatical changed me dramatically but it did show me my job was something I really wanted to keep doing. It makes you appreciate the company you work for and you come back feeling keen to work hard. They have given you something and you want to give something back.

Sri Lanka round-trip for Circle man

Paul Hill-Hottinger, development manager for acquisitions in the Thames Gateway at Circle 33, based in north London,took a six-month sabbatical over the summer of 2003 to decorate his house and visit Sri Lanka.

I had just moved house so it needed a lot of work, and I spent most of the time decorating and bringing it up to scratch. I was doing it all myself, because it’s much cheaper and I have done a lot of DIY before. It was mainly decorating and some light building work, such as fitting a kitchen. It was a full-time job for a few months and I didn’t finish everything, but I broke the back of it.

I then went to Sri Lanka for five weeks with my family. I felt it was really important for me to be able to do this with my family now and not miss out on my children while they’re young. I’ve got three small kids and at that time my wife was stuck at home, so it was a chance to go travelling before the two youngest were of school age. It was also an opportunity to recharge my batteries. I’m 41 and have been working pretty solidly at Circle 33 for 10 years and, frankly, I really needed a break.

I have never worked anywhere else where people take sabbaticals, and Circle 33 was good about it. From its point of view, I suppose it’s a staff retention policy. People work quite hard and you get to a point in your life where you start to feel you’re on a conveyor belt and you think, is this what I really want? You get a chance to step back and consider why you got into what you’re doing and what the positive things are and the alternatives. This proved to be so in my case I did want to go back and I came back with renewed enthusiasm.

Doing up the house didn’t really give me an insight into the development process though. The only insight it gave me was that I prefer my job to being a tradesman, because it was really hard work!

Overall, the sabbatical gave me uninterrupted time with my family and travelling round Sri Lanka was really terrific, a complete break. We had a lot of fun and spent a long time together; in a busy working life you don’t often get the opportunity to do that.

I am not sure I have got the money to do it again, but I don’t feel the need to now. I am more interested in doing my job and making progress against targets.

From Metropolitan to the Himalayas

Louise Moore was a senior marketing officer at Metropolitan Home Ownership, based in north London. She took a six-month sabbatical to go backpacking round Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. In October 2003 she resigned in order to travel round Nepal and the Himalayas, but returned after eight months to be a consultant special project manager.

Metropolitan has a policy whereby, if you’ve worked here for five years you can apply for a sabbatical, so they were very happy for me to go. Since I was 16 I’ve been fascinated with the world. I’ve done lots of travelling and been to Thailand before for three months when I saved up all my leave and didn’t have a holiday for ages.

I work in communications, so travelling gives you a little bit more understanding of the different types of people you meet working in London. When you’re travelling you come across people from every walk of life every day. It’s made me much more confident and relaxed. I came back full of new ideas inspired by different cultures. When coming up with ideas for planning events and openings, it’s made me think, how about having some of this food, or these dancers?

My last job was in a telecommunications company and it wasn’t flexible. Working overtime was expected of you. Having been on sabbatical definitely makes me enjoy working at MHO more. It recognises you’re not just an employee and takes into consideration that you’re this kind of person and give you leeway to do these things.

The second time I went, though, I decided I would have to leave because I still had this hunger and I wanted to ask for a year out. It was great – I used my MHO site boots to climb the Annapurna mountain range in the Himalayas, and then I ended up giving them away to an old man on the street. About four weeks after I arrived back, MHO agreed I could come back as a consultant three days a week, so I’ve had to buy another pair of boots!

I ended up quite tired after the second trip. It’s fed the hunger – it’s the first time I’ve felt it’s good to be back after 10 years. It’s quite nice to be getting my teeth into some new projects and working with other sections of the group. I would definitely recommend taking a sabbatical. It makes you grow and for me, it was a necessity.

Volunteer teaching in Peru

Holly Mann, a rent account manager at Broomleigh Housing Association based in Bromley, south London, took a four-month sabbatical in 2003. She used it to teach children with special needs in Peru.

I left university and went straight into this job. After three years, I felt I wanted to do something away from England that would be worthwhile and make a difference. My friend read an article in a magazine about the charity Kiya Survivors, which teaches children with special needs in Peru, and they were advertising for volunteers so we decided we would both go.

I paid £2500 to the charity, which covered flights, transfers and accommodation for the four months I was there. I didn’t really want to leave work but I was prepared to resign in order to do it because it was so important to me. Luckily enough, my management was brilliant and let me come back to my job here.

The volunteering involved teaching children with learning difficulties such as Down Syndrome, autism and behavioural problems. We were helping them do things like learn to count and organise the Christmas play.

We were teaching the children in Spanish, but I couldn’t speak Spanish when I arrived. For the first six weeks we were having lessons at the same time as teaching. It was a small village in the Andes and none of the teachers spoke English so you had to communicate in other ways. Some of the children had such special needs that you had to use sign language with them. It was quite challenging but I enjoyed it and when I left I could communicate in basic Spanish.

I feel like I made a difference. I felt we were very well liked and respected by the children, and I am still in touch with a lot of the people I met there. Peru is a third-world country, there’s poverty everywhere and no benefits system: it’s awful. I was always quite socially minded anyway, and my job is maximising people’s income and helping them not get evicted. But when I saw how many homeless people there are in Peru, it made me realise even more how important the home is.

I would definitely recommend doing something like this. Anyone in social housing would benefit from this kind of work because it helps you realise what people go through elsewhere. It makes you appreciate your own life more and want to help people get the most out of what they’ve got. In the UK, people are not stuck without any help. There are plenty of individuals over here willing to help others, but in Peru there’s nobody.

I was very lucky I was able to come back to Broomleigh. It made me feel relieved and very happy about working here because they wanted me back and I felt valued. It also made me feel like I wanted to come back rather than staying in Peru, which had been quite tempting.

I’d like to do something like this again in the future, but not the near future because I’ve got no money now!