ScribbleLive

Thanks for all your questions, keep sending them in. We are going to start with one from Susan John.

Hi Susan

Yes, this sounds like a great placement. Raleigh International as they are now known have been around for years and are a very established organisation. To make the most of his opportunity he should work out what he wants to get out of the experience and ensure he is fully informed before he gets there as to what is required of him. But Raleigh are exceptional at this. If you as Grandmother, or your children, are concerned about the destination then I’d advise you to ask questions which your grandson will be able to answer to give you piece of mind. Borneo is an amazing place and the experience will be first class. He’ll go away a boy and come back a man…and make you very proud. Hope this helps and remember to get him to send you loads of postcards!

Hello Mr MacLennan,

There are volunteering opportunities in some cases working on newspapers or radio stations, business placements or medical experience around the developing world. There are other language opportunities. Volunteering is a good way to get experience speaking the language. There are opportunities volunteering in French speaking West Africa or Morocco or in South America for Spanish speakers. He could get experience teaching, working in an orphanage or on a radio station. There are other options to go over to France and get experience working at a ski resort or picking grapes. These can be difficult to get hold of but are worth looking for.

Most gappers will do a combination of working at home getting some money together, volunteering overseas and doing some independent travel. It is great to make full use of the year. Have a look at Gapyear.com or the Year Out Group website to see lots of volunteering options as well as Projects Abroad.

What a brilliant choice! Volunteering will give you an amazing insight into a country and conservation work is a fantastic way of gaining new skills and getting to see places you would never be able to get to as a tourist. STA Travel can arrange a turtle conservation project for you in Costa Rica; projects are usually between 1 - 4 weeks and will involve activities including beach patrols, collecting eggs, gathering measurements and data from turtles and new hatchlings and general maintenance of the hatcheries. All this whilst surrounded by the pristine beaches of Costa Rica's Pacific coastline!

Hi Natasha

www.gapenterprise.co.uk and www.gapadvice.org are two organisations who can offer a personal service, www.gapyear.com, www.gap-year.com, www.yearoutgroup.org are three sites which offer advice and links to placements. As you are aware there are loads of sites and copious amounts of advice available online, but you’ll find it easier if you try and narrow down your thinking first. Your daughter needs to get to grips with what she wants to get out of her gap year first:

A worldly experience? To do something different? Work experience to help boost the CV or an application into University? To succeed with a personal challenge (as a ‘Chad’ – a Charity Adventurer)?

The best advice is for you both to sit down at home over a long weekend with some blank paper, pens (no PC), take the phone off the hook, arm yourselves with plenty of tea/coffee and biscuits and openly discuss what would be the best and most constructive gap year your daughter would love to do. Which countries would she like to go to? (e.g. “I’d love to go to Australia”) What once-in-a-lifetime experiences would she like to have (e.g. “work with an Orangutan in the wild”). Get the wish list up and go from there. Her gap year should be a magical life-changing experience she’ll tell her grandchildren about. Often this end product is ruined by people over-thinking this and getting bogged down in the minutia. It’s great that you’re doing this with her, very few parents are so involved, so she has a great start. Let her dream and then use your own experience to guide her. But do remember that the final decision should be hers, so try not to get over-involved. She may not thank you for it. Good luck!

Hello Kevin,

I haven’t heard of any gap year opportunities in North Korea but have a look on the web. I would be careful looking at options in somewhere like North Korea. Safety is something to be aware of. There are lots of other weird and wonderful places you can go such as Mongolia or rural Peru doing all sorts of things ranging from living with Nomads to working on Inca sites in the back of beyond.

South Korea has a number of teaching opportunities. Have a look around the web to see what else you can do.

Whilst traditional Round the World tickets are a no-go with your route, there are tailor-made Round the World or multi-stop tickets, which can be built for you and will allow you to travel literally anywhere you choose (budget dependent!)

These tickets are built using exclusive airfares, which you won’t find anywhere else. Sticking to major cities or gateways in each continent will help keep the cost of your tailor-made ticket down – the more airlines that fly to a city, the more options there will be for getting there. I do recommend speaking to one of our advisors, as this is a more unusual route and they can search thousands of routes with different airlines to put this together for you.

Hello Mimslt,

There are lots of medical opportunities overseas which you can join and in many cases get hands on experience. The less developed the country will generally mean the more you can do. The more programmes you join the more expensive the placements will become. You may want to focus on one location for the medical experience. See if you can get outreach experience going into villages or communities. It is a great way to help out as a relatively inexperienced medic. Having said that I have come across gappers who have delivered babies on their gap year. Projects Abroad do lots of medical placements but also have a look at other organisations at the Year Out Group site as well as Gapyear.com

I don’t know of programmes that pay for your experience as a pre-university medical student. Lots of volunteers do fundraising. Lots of Rotary clubs and trusts are willing to contribute to your travels. Ask around and search on the web to see who might be able to help out.

Medical volunteering can really tell you if it is the career for you as well as getting valuable experience to help with your university application.

I hope it works out for you.

UK citizens can visit New Zealand for up to 6 months without a visa (though do always double check with the relevant embassy closer to the time of travel as the requirements can change).

If you wish to work whilst in New Zealand, you will need to apply for a working holiday visa, which allows you to stay up to 23 months. A working holiday visa costs from £103.

Hi Philippa

I hear your concerns and you’re not alone! As with most things in life the most important thing to do here is to ask your own questions once you find the end product you think you like i.e. auto-trader or Exchange & Mart might find you the car you want, but you’ll still quiz the owner, take it for a test drive, toot the horn and check for rust before you part with your money. The portal sites are great for you to find all the product, however, once you start talking directly to the volunteer organisations make sure you ask all the obvious questions: Where does my money go? Why does the project exist? What will I be doing there on a daily/weekly basis? What benefit will I personally be doing to the local community? And what benefit does the project do to the local community? And crucially, “Can I speak to someone who has done this placement before?” I would take a dim view of any organisation unwilling to provide answers to these basic questions or who is unable to put you in touch with someone who has been on the placement before you. As for non volunteer companies, the safest bet in the current climate where travel companies with arandomtravelname.com are going bust weekly, is to look into the history of the company and check for ATOL and ABTA bonding. I hope this helps. Thanks Philippa!

Good plan B! Costs for a trip like this are totally dependent on the way you travel, the level of accommodation you choose, how many activities you’d like to do. You’ll probably survive on whatever money you have but the more you can save, the more activities and experiences you will be able to enjoy.

As a rough guide, many people go with £1000 per month, so your budget seems realistic. You may spend more in Oz especially if you choose to go skydiving or do a bungee jump…then in South East Asia you’ll spend far less with a cheap hotel costing a few pounds a day.

If you are looking to gain extra skills whilst you are away to help with your uni application next year, then consider doing some volunteering or learning a new skill during your travels. There are many volunteering projects in SE Asia, from elephant conservation in Thailand to community work in Vietnam. As for learning a new skill, how about doing your PADI Open Water course in Koh Tao, Thailand?

Hello Yasminah,

Marketing is a great area to work in. Projects Abroad have placements in Mongolia and China that would fit in well. We had a guy who went to Mongolia and worked on an English version of the Mongolian Airlines website. We have had volunteers working on marketing campaigns for new shopping malls In Shanghai. The main advice I can give is get stuck in. The keener and harder you work the more you will get out of it. There will be frustrations at times but it will be rewarding.

One guy who did a business placement with us in Mongolia ended up with a job working for the UN in Mongolia. It doesn’t happen to everyone but it can happen.

I would look at a gap year after high school. It is a great time when you generally have few commitments and can benefit from a year out. I took one after university as well. Life is too short not to make the most of having time working overseas. I don’t know many people that have regretted taking a gap year.

Research your gap year thoroughly and know what you are letting yourself in for. It will pay off later on.

Hey Malik!
Is South Africa safe? Yes.
Are parts of South Africa unsafe for tourists wandering around? Yes.
Is the UK safe? Yes.
Are parts of the UK unsafe for tourists wandering around? Yes!

In a nutshell it’s down to where you go and what you do, no matter where you head in the world. The bottom line is that you need to ask the questions of the organisations you like to find the answers to these questions. Such as: “Where is this based and where will I be staying?” “Is it considered a safe part of town for tourists like myself?” “What problems have you had in the past?” And most importantly, “Can I speak to someone who spent time on this placement?” and ask them how they felt when they were out there.

Regards South Africa as a destination? South Africa is an awesome destination. Not only does it have some of the best volunteering opportunities in the world (game conservation, sports, community and health projects), it is also the Adventure Capital of the South with the World’s biggest bungy jump, some of the best rafting and the opportunity to dive in a cage with a Great White Shark. There are work opportunities, incredible treks, the beautiful garden route and a whale migration that passes by offshore annually. Best of all, it’s the gateway to the Southern African countries of Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania. All remarkable countries which are cheap, easy and safe to travel through either solo, with friends, on an overland truck or in a tour group. So for an overall gap year experience, South Africa is one of the best. Go for it. People rarely have a bad time out there and post World Cup it’s a fun, vibrant place to be right now. Hope this helps.

Hello Mikeaway,

A good question. You need to really find out what you will be doing for two weeks. It can be beneficial helping out at a summer school or being a teaching assistant or helping the football team. You want to make sure you will not be disrupting a school curriculum. Ask lots of questions of the organisation you are going with to see what you really will be doing.

In general I would recommend trying to get away for at least a month over a summer or three months on your gap year. The more time you are away the more you will gain. You will also often find the cost of volunteering for three months is not too different to a month. It is better value.

Hi Henry, There is sooo much information available on the internet but it can be difficult to know who to trust! Lonely Planet and Rough Guide guidebooks are a great place to start and rather than going out to buy them all, check at your local library – you can always photocopy the pages you want to keep hold of.

Tripadvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) is also a good place to check for reviews of accommodation. And once you are on the road you will pick up lots of tips of places to stay at (and places to avoid) from your fellow travellers!

Hi everyone, thanks for sending in your questions. We have just under ten minutes left, and so will do our best to answer everybody.

There are arguments for staying at home and earning money for university but be careful you might find you spend all the money you earn! It is easy to pretend to be saving up by not going away. You end up buying yourself a car and going to the pub a few more times than your friends who are going travelling. You can get to the end of the year and find you don’t have that much money left.

How about a compromise. Save for your travels until Christmas. Join a programme for a couple of months. Travel independently for a couple of months. Get back in time for the summer at home for a few months to save up for university.

Alternatively join the Year In Industry and get paid on your year at home before going overseas travelling. www.yini.org.uk

Hi Malik

Most Round the World tickets are valid for up to 12 months i.e. your flight home to the UK must be within 12 months of the date you first leave the UK. Apart from that, its very flexible; you can choose how long you spend in each place and you can change this on the road if your plans change (which they probably will : ) ) When you book your ticket, make sure you find out what the date change fee is and how you make any changes – sometimes changes have to made through the airline and sometimes through your travel agent, depending on the type of ticket booked.

As for adding destinations when you are travelling, it is often possible but it is more complicated and more costly to add extra destinations in, so try and get your actual route as fixed as you can before you book your ticket.

Projects Abroad don’t have paid options working overseas. The twenty six countries we work in are mainly developing. It isn’t practical in most cases as a gapper to earn money in the developing world.

Most volunteers work at home first before heading off. Others take the option to work in Australia or New Zealand as part of the working holiday programme. Other programmes allow you to earn money working in the US with Camp America or BUNAC.

Hi Catherine

Online TEFL courses are brilliant as a back-up i.e. if you’d like to have the qualification under your belt and might spend a short amount of time teaching whilst you are away. But if you have the time and do plan on teaching whilst you are away, then I would recommend doing a more thorough, classroom based course. This will give you more practical experience and increased confidence for when you find yourself stood at the front of a classroom! STA Travel can book you onto a weekend TEFL course and at the moment they are on special offer (from £168 for a 20 hour weekend course).

Hi ABC1!

If a Spanish person asked you whether it was possible to volunteer in the UK during their gap year to improve their English, ideally to a fluent position, you would of course say ‘yes’. There are charity shops, churches, volunteer groups etc. all over the country crying out for a spare pair of hands.
So the answer to your question about volunteering in Spain is of course ‘Yes’ - there are certainly opportunities available to volunteer in Spain to improve your Spanish. You just need to find them.
There may be placements run by organisations which you can find on the web through a good Google search. However, it is reasonably easy to find your own.
The best advice is to come at it like a Spanish person looking for a place in the UK. What advice would you give them? Probably to focus on the areas that interest them (community/care/health/sports projects), use local contacts that might have links e.g. church groups, and use the internet to find people and approach them direct.
So I’d suggest you get online and see what happens. It’s relatively easy to find cheap accommodation locally, or someone might put you up. I spent an entire summer in France when I was younger and came back fluent in French, which helped me no end. So I’m a big fan of this. So go for it! Suerte! [that’s ‘Good Luck’ in Spanish for those not in the know!]