Giving and Gaining

I want to learn a language. Spending a whole year immersed in a different language gives you an invaluable opportunity to improve your language skills: learn Spanish on a project in Chile or Mandarin in China. How about something more unusual like Arabic or Zulu? Ever thought about learning Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese?

I want to improve my employment prospects. Improve your skills in a wide range of projects and placements around the world. Fill up your C.V. by taking advantage of the considerable opportunities available. Do something meaningful and worthwhile during your gap year that will set you apart from the crowd.

I want to see life in the cities. Experience life in the centre of Tokyo or in a modern Chinese city. Battle with tuktuks in Bangkok or matatus in Kampala. Soak up the atmosphere in Santo Domingo or Lima — two of the most beautiful Spanish-colonial cities in Latin America.

I want to help people. Work with an NGO in Cambodia and help preserve the country’s heritage. Help disadvantaged children in orphanages in Peru or how about working part time in the cancer ward in a Sri Lankan hospital? Give music workshops with street boys in Bolivia.

I’d like to try my hand at teaching English. Teach at a secondary school in rural northwest China or experience life in a Vietnamese university. How about giving English lessons in a small village in India or a city in Chile? Teach Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka or nomads in Mauritania.

I’d like to do something medical. Assist in looking after babies at an orphanage in Lesotho, in a clinic in Uganda, with disabled children in Sri Lanka, or with convalescent patients in Japan.

I’m interested in outdoor activities and the environment. Work as an assistant Outward Bound instructor in Hong.

I want new skills and hobbies. How about learning salsa in Chile, judo in Japan, karate in Vietnam or taiqi in China? Organise a play, music club or arts and crafts in your spare time. Run a newspaper in a Namibian coastal town. Work for a radio station in Uganda or learn to cook Thai food.

I want to have new experiences. Experience a very different diet in China or Vietnam. Bungee jump 216 metres at Blouwkraantz in South Africa, explore a souk in Mauritania. Guarantee yourself a white Christmas in Japan. Go white water rafting in Uganda.

I want to do something practical. Work for a locust eradication project in Mauritania, learn boat engine maintenance in Hong Kong, drive (and repair as you go along) a lorry in Botswana.

I have musical or artistic talents. Teach art and music to children in Namibia. Test your ingenuity in devising extra curricular activities in places where resources are scarce (or non-existent). Teach ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ to Japanese pensioners. Work as a designer at a woman’s co-operative in Sri Lanka.

Can I work with the disabled? How about working as a care assistant for disabled children in Peru, Chile or South Africa. Or help the disabled in Cambodia?

I’m interested in working with children. Work in orphanages in Botswana, Malawi, or Peru. Be surrounded by clambering children in a Namibian crèche or work in children’s homes in South Africa and Uganda.

All work and no play? Scuba dive in the Gulf of Thailand or on one of the largest barrier reefs in the world in the Bay Islands off Honduras. Cross the deserts and mountains of western China on a three day train journey. White water raft down the Zambesi, ski in Chile or China or bungee jump your way across Africa.

I want to travel and see the world. See live volcanoes and the driest desert in the world in the Andes, the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Warriors and the Yangzte, camel trek in the Sahara and live on the banks of the Niger River, see the ‘Great, Grey-Green, Greasy Limpopo’, Hiroshima, Mount Fuji, Lake Malawi, Mount Kinabalu, the Amazon rain forest, visit tropical islands in Andaman Sea or ski in the Tianshan mountains, climb Table Mountain, visit the 3000 islands of Halong Bay. And do all of this, not as a tourist, but as a local.

And now for something completely different. 
Give yourself an experience more memorable, constructive and life-changing than a shorter visit would ever allow you. Take the plunge and choose to spend a year of your life in a place that will become your home and where you will make hundreds of friends. You only have one gap year — seize the opportunity to make the most of it.