A FORMER Okehampton College student is starting the new year with a great new challenge, after being selected as a World Youth Millennium Award winner.

Helen Harris of Exbourne has just one month to raise £500 in sponsorship before embarking on a three-month placement of community work in Blackburn.

And following this, she leaves for Indonesia, where she will continue to work in areas of need within the community.

The WYMA programme is a new scheme being run jointly by the Prince?s Trust and Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO). When she embarks on the project in February, Helen, and an exchange participant from Indonesia, will be living with a local family in Lancashire.

She expects to be working on a structured rehabilitation project for homeless drug users, aiming to break the cycle of drug misuse.

The volunteer team that Helen will be part of will also be involved in projects to promote positive community relations between Christians and Muslims in the Blackburn area by raising cultural and religious awareness.

Helen, who is 22, graduated from Swansea University last year with a degree in psychology and has been working with adults who have suffered spinal injuries.

She said she is ?very much? looking forward to her project.

?We get placed in local communities, away from the place in which we?ve grown up,? she said.

In May Helen and her team will travel to East Java and live with local families and work on community related projects for a three-month period.

?The whole aim of the programme is that we are of practical use to the community. We?re paired with one person during the programme, so we get to learn about each other?s country and customs.?

Helen said achieving her sponsorship total in just a matter of weeks was ?rather daunting?. She is intending to run some pub quizzes and sell quiz sheets as part of her fundraising but would be grateful to hear from anyone who would like to sponsor her work.

She can be contacted on 01837 851629 or on 07944 610 177.