Britain’s personal debt is increasing by £1 million every 4 minutes. Graduates who leave University have an average debt of £12,363. Are you in debt? Could you work with the homeless, sick and elderly? Then you could become debt free simply by doing some charity work.

It is a new and exciting scheme called Do Good 4 Debt which will launch in January 2008. Do Good 4 Debt will work with corporate companies in the UK to sponsor people who are in debt. The sponsorship will pay part or all of the person’s debt off in exchange that they go and work for a charity for a certain period of months under that company’s name.

Do Good 4 Debt is the brainchild of Ian Wallace, a 26 year old graduate who had £14,000 worth of debts after leaving University. Ian initially wanted to take a gap year before embarking on a career in his chosen field, Law. After doing a number of factory jobs with the entire wage going on monthly debt payments he decided this was not how he wanted life to be after working so hard at his University studies. One lunchtime in the factory diner, Ian heard the factory owner on an adjacent table moaning that he didn’t donate any profits from the business to charity because he never see’s what good it does.

So Ian hit upon an idea how he could ensure companies donating to charity could clearly see the difference they were making, while getting rid of his debt. Ian wrote to a number of companies in his town and told them about his debt and that they could sponsor him to go and work with a charity for a period of 8 months, with the money going to pay his debts off.

Initially he didn’t get much response but after setting up talks with various charities and hearing about their individual projects he detailed these more in a simple brochure Ian had designed and printed by friends. Ian then got an excellent response from businesses and was able to pay his debts off immediately. He then went on to work with 3 charities in his local town.

Ian got a part time job at evenings and weekends to supplement his living while working at the charities. Upon completing his time at the charities Ian prepared a report on the time he spent at the charities and came back to the companies and presented this to all the employees, pointing out exactly what difference they had made and contributed to those charities.

Ian is currently on another charity sponsored placement in Rwanda, Africa. Ian will be returning to the UK in November 2007 where he hopes to sign up 500 candidates who are in debt and would like an opportunity to get this paid off in return for charity work.

Ian thinks this is an excellent opportunity for students who have graduated as they can have a type of gap year as well as having their debts paid off. Nothing like this has ever been done before and Ian has proved it works. It costs £16 to register as a candidate on the Do Good 4 Debt website with all the money going towards marketing the concept within the UK.

Ian has already signed up over 12 charities in the UK and two projects based in Africa. 4 companies have also signed up to look for charity sponsorship opportunities and membership of candidates has already reached over 100 already.

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