I was 27-and-a-half when I decided that I was going to live abroad and volunteer before I reached the age of 28.
I had been working as a journalist in London for about five years after leaving university and absolutely loved my job. I worked with great people, got to do fun stuff like going out on dawn raids on crack dealers' homes with the police, and forgot all about it at the weekend and had fun with my friends.
But I'd been in the job for a while and there was little prospect of me being promoted at my newspaper and journalists were being made redundant all over the place nationally, meaning the opportunity of getting a new job was slim.
So I decided it was time to actually do the thing I had thought about doing for years and years.
Friends of mine had been travelling around the world for years at a time, but that idea never really appealed to me, so I would just watch them go and welcome them back.
I always knew I had it in me to go abroad at some point, but I didn't just want to travel, I wanted to actually live somewhere and contribute to the community there. And also to see if I could build a new life in a different place away from all the people and things I knew.
Having been turned down by VSO because of my lack of experience, I started hunting around for smaller, grassroots organisations that I might be able to join. By talking to friends of friends and picking the brains of anyone who knew anything about the subject, I stumbled across a small charity based in Kigali , Rwanda , set up by some former students at my university.
I got in touch and their remarkably relaxed attitude meant I was gearing up to move to Kigali a few weeks after finding them.
This laissez-faire style was exactly what I was looking for, but has come with its own problems now I'm here, and I'm still trying to find my feet within the organisation.
But the decision to uproot and move out here was definitely a good one. I'm hoping that the experiences I have here may make me more focused and be able to decide what I want to do next with my career. But even if nothing that grand comes out of it, I will have learnt an awful lot and had good fun along the way, so I can't see how I can lose.
I didn't quite live up to my pledge though – I flew to Kigali four days after my 28th birthday...
Jenny Clover - 28 and a bit
Follow Jenny's adventure http://www.jenny-clover.blogspot.com/
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Jenny's top tips on volunteering abroad..
1) Make sure you thoroughly research the organisation you will be going with and know exactly what your role will be when you arrive – there's nothing worse than planning a big trip and ending up twiddling your thumbs.
2) Do a bit of research about how much essentials cost in the country you will be living in – in Kigali sun cream is £15 a bottle.
3) Don't be afraid to pack a few luxuries – you may think you'll be happy roughing it for a few months, but when you're thousands of miles from home it's good to be able to treat yourself, whether it's with a hairdryer, a good moisturiser or some DVDs.
4) Read up on the country you're visiting – a lot of people I've met in Kigali had no idea how developed and Westernised the city would be until they arrived. There have also been a number of terrorist attacks in the city over the last few months, which don't always make the news in the UK .
5) Make sure you have a back-up for everything essential – a photocopy of your passport and yellowfever vaccination certificate; more than one bankcard or means of accessing cash; a phone number for your host in case your plane is delayed; somewhere else to stay if for some reason you aren't picked up from the airport; a large supply of any medication or malaria pills; at least two travel adaptors – power surges are common.
6) It's easy to hang around with other volunteers and ex-pats but if you can, stay with a local family and try to make friends with people who are from the country you're in – you'll get a much better flavour of what the place is all about and the food will almost certainly be better.
