Up to now, we've been singing the praises of gap year volunteering, not least because it's something we never had the chance to do, and we've always been somewhat jealous of those who've disappeared over the horizon to go do just that.
However, there are two sides to every story, and here, so you can't accuse us of being too one-sided, is the other.
Daniela Papi has done a lot of volunteer work. In Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka. She even organised a volunteer trip of her own, to raise funds to build a school in Cambodia. This took the form of teaming up with five friends and cycling across the country, which may have been a great idea in theory, and probably would have been in practice as well - if they'd prepared for it better.
Well, at least it would have been to start with. However, they kept on pedalling ... until they actually saw the school they'd been working so hard to build. It was just an empty shell.
And that just goes to show too much money people raise never actually makes it to what it's been raised for, either because of waste or corruption, says Daniela.
And as for the prospect of hundreds of thousands of young people leaving the country each year to join their chosen gap year volunteer programmes, for whatever reason - good intentions, interesting CV, you name it - many, through no fault of their own, are causing more harm than good to the same local communities they're travelled halfway round the world to "serve".
Case in point: Cambodian orphanages. Volunteering to serve there is an extremely popular gap year option. Now, here's something to think about: why is it that even though the number of Cambodian orphans is actually on the decrease ... the number of orphanages there is very much on the rise. According to Unicef, three out of every four children in these orphanages, in reality, has at least one parent.
But if people coming from wealthy countries are happy to contribute their time and - more importantly - their money to this ever-growing number of orphanages, then in the long run what good are they really doing for the children being herded out of school and into those orphanages ... for the communities in which they live ... and, in the long run, for the gap year volunteers themselves?
The focus of gap year volunteering, says Daniela, should be on the learning first, as in learning how to "serve". That's instead of jumping blindly in and, through no fault of their own, contributing to a situation that's actually less straightforward than it appears on the surface.
There's not enough room here to go into much more detail, but if you search for Daniela (that’s Daniela Papi) on the BBC website, by now her "Four Thought" podcast on the subject should be up and downloadable.
And even if you don't agree with everything she says there, you'll still find it interesting listening.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes, we'd still like to do a spot of gap year volunteering ourselves - but if we ever got the chance, we'd think much more carefully about where we'd be going ... and what we'd be doing when we got there.
