Gap year volunteer

Working as a gap year volunteer is becoming an increasingly popular choice for people who have made the decision to take a year out. For some people working as gap year volunteer is the main focus of their gap year - and it's possible to spend the whole of your year working as a gap year volunteer. If you don't want to commit to a long-term project, however, we have plenty of short-term volunteer ideas that mean it's also possible to spend just part of your time away working as a gap year volunteer. For example, if you're travelling on a round the world ticket, you could choose to work as a gap year volunteer on one of your stopovers. Whatever length of time you spend working as a gap year volunteer, be it for twelve months or just a few weeks, you will be making an extremely valuable and important contribution to the volunteer project you choose to get involved with and the destination you choose to volunteer in.

The benefits of working as a gap year volunteer are immense. It's important to remember that those of us in the western world are extremely privileged to be able to take a gap year. Working as a gap year volunteer gives you a chance to give something back to some of the countries that you visit on your travels.

Working as a gap year volunteer is a two way process. Volunteer projects all over the world rely on gap year volunteers to provide much-needed human resources in order to help them carry out their vital work. The gap year volunteers, however, also benefit from the experience. If you work as a gap year volunteer, you gain a far greater understanding of the country you are travelling. For example, working as a gap year volunteer, you get to know local culture and generally experience life in that country on a far more intimate level than the average passing tourist. On a more practical note, if you work as gap year volunteer you often pick up useful new skills and experiences during the course of your work. Being able to say that you have worked as a gap year volunteer abroad is generally a great thing to be able to put on your CV as well. If you work as a gap year volunteer on your year out you return home with a real sense of personal achievement, and most gap year volunteers describe it as having been a real life-changing experience for them.   

If you decide you want to work as a gap year volunteer, the obvious decision you have to make is what type of volunteer project to get involved with. Broadly speaking there are three main fields in which you can volunteer - Wildlife and Animal Conservation, Environmental Conservation and People and Community based projects. Working as a gap year volunteer, whilst being extremely rewarding, can also often be hard work at times - so it's important to work as a gap year volunteer within a field you're particularly passionate about. Once you have decided what aspect of gap year volunteer work most interests you, the next step is to decide which country you want to work as a gap year volunteer in. There are gap year volunteer projects looking for volunteers all over the world, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find a project that ‘ticks all of your boxes.' In order to research you gap year volunteer options the best source of information is the Real Gap website. If there's anything you can't find on the site, or anything you need clarifying, contact us.

Particularly if the main focus of your year out is working as a gap year volunteer, it may be worthwhile looking for sponsorship in order to help you fund your gap year. Once you've made the decision to take a gap year the hardest thing you have to do is save up all of the necessary money you need to go way. If you're going to be working as a gap year volunteer people can be incredibly generous when they realise you're going to be working on a worthwhile project, and receiving sponsorship gives you a real boost. For advice on raising sponsorship money to enable you to work as a gap year volunteer, (and for general advice on gap year saving as well), check out Real Gap's advice on gap year funding page.


Back to the Gap Year Questions Page