Ms Impey (23) has just returned from 11 months working as a volunteer sports coach in community clubs in one of South Africa's poorest areas.
Her enduring memories are the smiles of the children and their enthusiasm for any programme which was on offer.
"We were providing opportunities and activities which they wouldn't have had access to otherwise . . .Our football clubs were supposed to be for 50 children but 200 would turn up. They were so into anything if they had a chance to be involved."
Ms Impey was one of six University of Otago geography students who spent this year working with aid and social development programmes in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and South Africa through the Univol scheme, a joint geography department and Volunteer Services Abroad programme.
The others - Torrey McDonnell, Simon Donald, Kimberley Cleland, Rachel Hogg and Josie Gardner Orr - are still travelling overseas or in New Zealand, but Ms Impey returned on December 23 to celebrate Christmas Day, which is also her birthday, with family.
Ms Impey lived in a VSA flat in East London, a city on the Indian Ocean coast, but worked in Mdantsane, a huge township about 20 minutes drive away.
Its original inhabitants were black people who created their own informal settlement after being forcibly removed from parts of East London during the apartheid regime, and Ms Impey said the township was still home to many poor people who lived in small houses.
The township was said to be the second largest after the infamous Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg, she said.
"I kept asking how many people lived in Mdantsane but the reply was that no-one knew and no-one cared. Many of the people who live there are unregistered."
Ms Impey worked for Imvomvo, a charity running community clubs in five locations, three in the township and two in nearby rural areas.
As well as offering non-competitive sporting opportunities to people "aged from 2 to 90-plus" the clubs offered preschool and after-school programmes.
At one centre, a group of local women tended a large vegetable garden to supply the preschools and needy families, as well as enough surplus produce to sell to support the centre's work.
Ms Impey said nothing could have prepared her for the reality of life in Mdantsane.
While the apartheid regime ended 14 years ago, she said there was still a wide divide between black and white, and between rich and poor.
"South Africa is a very confusing and challenging environment. It is a very strange place to live. Officially there is no more apartheid, but they [the government] haven't the systems in place to enable black people to improve their situation.
"For example, the education system is quite elitist. Unless you have money, or have a particular sporting or academic talent, it is difficult to go to school."
Despite their poverty, the people of Mdantsane were "incredibly generous and welcoming", Ms Impey said.
She found it uplifting to help children achieve things, including teaching girls and women self-defence - Ms Impey is a tae kwon do black belt - taking children to the beach who had never been there even though they only lived 40 minutes' drive away, and teaching children who had never been in a swimming pool to swim.
Next year, Ms Impey plans to complete a postgraduate diploma in development studies at Victoria University, looking particularly at structural inequalities in developing countries.
"Really it is a way of being able to get back to South Africa. It was very difficult saying goodbye . . .
"I am not sure exactly how I will be able to afford to do it, or when I will be able to do it, but one day I will go back."
