Young people take poverty drama to Edinburgh Festival

|PIC1|This year, eight young people from the UK stepped out of their fast-food Facebook comfort zones and took the trip of a lifetime to live and work in a developing country for 10 weeks.

The group, aged between 18-25, were picked to take part in a pioneering new volunteer scheme funded by the Department for International Development and run by Christian Aid.

The cast of the Platform2 theatre group make up a melting pot of young British adults, all from different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds but with one common thread: they have experienced what life is like for people whose lives are blighted by poverty, racism and climate change.

They will be putting on Poverty Monologues at this year's Edinburgh Festival to tell others what they experienced, and show the impact life in Peru, Ghana, India and South Africa has had on them.

Each performer has recreated a scene and character from the country they visited: a young girl from Cape Town who has been driven from her home by apartheid, a mother in India who has no healthcare for her disabled son, an old farmer in Ghana whose land has been ravaged by climate change … each monologue tells the poignant stories of these people through the eyes of the British volunteers, who had never before seen life outside the UK.

Platform2 is aimed at young British people from less advantaged backgrounds who would not normally have the chance to travel overseas. It is a fully-funded, three-year scheme and has so far sent over 700 young Britons to countries including Ghana, South Africa, India, Peru, Nepal and Kenya.

The Poverty Monologues is on at The Space UK@Venue 45 from August 17-22.