Englishwoman volunteering her way around the world

Jill Hall wrapping presents at the Auckland City Mission. Picture / Paul Estcourt

British widow Jill Hall has been volunteering her way around the world since October. She started in China working with abandoned babies, then went to Kong Kong to help out at an HIV drop-in centre, then Thailand where she delivered sexual health information to street prostitutes.

Mrs Hall, 56, arrived in New Zealand last Saturday, went to church on Sunday, and was advised to go to the Auckland City Mission on Monday.

She has spent the week helping to wrap 2000 Christmas presents for those attending the mission's annual Christmas dinner at the Auckland Town Hall tomorrow. Around 1200 lonely and isolated people are expected.

Mrs Hall is one of more than 500 volunteers helping the mission with its Christmas plans, which also include packing 1400 food parcels and 700 hampers for the needy.

Volunteers are crucial, says missioner Diane Robertson: "We could not do our work without them."

Mrs Hall, who used to work as a pharmacy assistant, says she gets off planes without any plans but is well-received by charities. An experienced volunteer, she is thoroughly briefed before she starts work.

Mrs Hall became involved in voluntary work at the age of 46, when she went to Romania to assist at a hospice for HIV-positive children. After her policeman husband Ian died suddenly of heart disease in 2000, Mrs Hall found time weighing heavily.

Her three children, aged 36, 34 and 29, were supportive of her plan to volunteer her way around the world: "As my youngest son said, you won't be boring in an old person's home. And he said that if you don't do it, later in life you'll regret it."

Friends - some of whom thought her quite mad - helped Mrs Hall fundraise, and the undertaker in her home town of Gosport, Hampshire, paid for her round-the-world ticket.

Ask Mrs Hall what she gets out of it and she says she's not certain: satisfaction and new experiences for sure. "It's like a personal mission, I think. I honestly don't know why I do it."

Some of her experiences among the poverty-stricken and unloved can be draining; some days she returns to her backpacker hostel and withdraws.

Mrs Hall is spending eight weeks in New Zealand, and hopes to spend a couple of them travelling around the country - "New Zealanders are really, really friendly people" - before heading to Australia, Indonesia, then South Africa before heading back to England in June next year.

She is unlikely to be off the road for long - she has already been asked if she would like to spend 2007 helping street kids in Brazil. And from the way she's talking, it sounds as if she would.