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Volunteer Abroad
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Working as a volunteer abroad on a gap year or career break is becoming an increasingly popular option for many travellers. Many of us in the west are privileged enough to be able to travel all over the world, and working as a gap year volunteer abroad gives you the opportunity to give something back to some of the countries you visit. Of course if you don't volunteer abroad you are still helping the countries you visit by contributing to the local economy as a tourist, but working as a volunteer abroad gives you the chance to make a much more direct and personal contribution. Working as a volunteer abroad doesn't have to be the entire focus of your gap year or career break either. For example, you could travel on a round the world ticket and choose to volunteer abroad in just one of the countries on your itinerary. If you volunteer abroad on your gap year or career break you will return home having gained a much better perspective on life, together with a great sense of personal achievement. It's highly likely you'll have picked up some new skills along the way too.
If you do want to volunteer abroad, you will need to decide where you'd like to volunteer and what type of project you'd most like to get involved with when you volunteer abroad. Working as a volunteer abroad is extremely rewarding, but it can be tough work at times - so the important thing is to choose a country and project that you are particularly passionate about. If you volunteer abroad the projects available tend to focus on one of three main areas - community based projects helping people, wildlife projects helping endangered animals or environmental projects helping to conserve fragile or endangered ecosystems.
Real Gap is involved with many hugely rewarding volunteer projects throughout the world, and gap year travellers who volunteer abroad are absolutely vital to the valuable work that these projects carry out. If you want to volunteer abroad the best starting point is to search Real Gap's website in order to find the projects that most interest you. Once you have done that you can then call Real Gap's team of expert travel advisers who will be happy to answer any specific questions or queries you may have. To give you just a small idea of some of the opportunities to volunteer abroad Real Gap has available, here are a few examples:
Volunteer abroad with wildlife
If you're passionate about caring for animals there are all kinds of incredibly rewarding opportunities to volunteer abroad with wildlife. Perhaps not surprisingly Africa is a particularly popular place to travel to for anyone who wants to volunteer abroad helping out on a wildlife project. Volunteer help is much needed, and there are some excellent projects in Africa on which you can volunteer abroad.
If you are not planning to visit Africa on your gap year there are many other opportunities all over the world to volunteer abroad on a wildlife project - from working with orang-utans in the jungles of Malaysia to helping endangered dolphins off the coast of Peru.
Volunteer abroad with people
If you would like to volunteer abroad in order to help people on your gap year or career break there is similarly a huge array of extremely rewarding projects looking for volunteers all over the world. For example, you could volunteer abroad working with the street children of Rio in Brazil, work in a childrens' hospital in South Africa or help to re-build houses destroyed by the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka. When you volunteer abroad on many of these projects the work can often be extremely challenging, but you are rewarded each day by witnessing first-hand the direct and positive impact they make to peoples' lives.
Volunteer abroad to help the environment
While it is important to come to the aid of endangered wildlife and animals, it is equally vital to help to protect and conserve the often fragile environments in which they live. If you want to volunteer abroad in order to help the environment Real Gap has some highly rewarding opportunities in several locations. For example you could volunteer abroad working Down Under as a Conservation Volunteer Australia, help to conserve Africa's natural coastline on the Africa Wild Coast Volunteer Teaching programme or help with environmental education on the Galapagos Islands Environmental Conservation volunteer abroad programme.
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