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Gap years aren’t always all about teaching children, feeding rescued animals or working in an orphanage. You can get the same immersive experience in a new country and a new culture whilst learning about a job that you want to do when you come home. Learn business skills, marketing tricks and help impart social media know-how during the day and spend your weekends experiencing an entirely different culture, meeting new people and/or discovering beautiful beaches and hushed temples.

1. Get business savvy in China

Undoubtedly the business capital of the world, China has it all when it comes to modern amenities, unspoilt beaches, rural adventures and friendly locals. Head to Beijing or Shanghai with Oyster and learn how the fastest growing economy does business. They have a wide range of sectors you can pick from depending on your interest – accountancy, advertising, science, IT, healthcare and more.
Your current experience will be utilised and you’ll develop new CV enhancing skills too. Although your supervisor and most of your colleagues will speak English, Oyster offer four weeks of intensive Mandarin training to help you navigate the city. And at the end of the programme, you’ll get a certificate and a final report that will help your CV stand out back in the UK. If you’re feeling inspired, you can find out some more information here.
4 weeks, with concurrent Mandarin lessons – £3288

2. Hone your journalistic skills in Ghana

Journalism is a tough business to crack and experience is everything. Give yourself a helping hand and try a journalism internship in the Ghanaian capital of Accra with Gap Force. You can choose to join a newspaper, TV channel or radio station, working alongside some of Ghana’s leading journalists and reporters to develop your research, writing and copy editing skills. And at the weekends you can head off to explore the rich history, culture and wildlife that this incredible country has to offer – wild elephants at Mole National Park, unspoilt beaches and years of bloody history down at Cape Coast. You can read more about the details of the internship here.
4 – 12 weeks, starting price £1250

3. Medical training in Costa Rica

If you’re planning a career in medicine then getting some first hand medical experience is essential. Another project by Gap Force, this one sees you learning expedition and water related medicine and surviving dangerous environments in the Costa Rican jungle. If travelling and medicine are your two passions then there is no other project that will get your heart racing as much as this one. The experiences and skills you’ll be learning are seemingly endless – jungle navigation, fire lighting, casualty assessments, catastrophic haemorrhaging, breathing and circulation, evacuation strategies, fracture handling and use of a machete to name just a few.
You’ll take part in rescue response training learning crucial knots, harnesses and rigging systems and testing out your newly learnt medical skills. And if you have any energy left after all that, you can leave your month in the jungle and head to Quepos and volunteer at a local medical clinic, shadowing doctors and treating patients to get that crucial real life experience. Exhilarating, educational and completely unforgettable, these 2 weeks will stay with you your whole life. Just go here for more information.
3 weeks, £1950

4. Become a ski instructor in Canada

If you love skiing and snowboarding and dream of a job on the slopes head to the Canadian ski resort of Whistler Blackcomb and within four weeks you could be a qualified ski instructor, ready to spend the rest of your life on the snowy mountains. In groups of no more than 6 you’ll improve your ski techniques, gain the AST1 Avalanche Skills (super handy in those Canadian mountain ranges) and be ready to sit your CSIA L1 at the end of it with no problems. And if you opt for the Ski Instructor Internship you have the opportunity to apply for a job at the Snow School once you’ve passed and spend your days being paid to ski. Pretty cool, right? Go here for more details on all gap year ski courses with Alltracks Academy.

5. Community outreach in Tanzania

If you’re after a bit of office experience but also want to experience a new and colourful culture, pack your bag and sign up to The Leap’s Tanzania Community Development & Safari project. Through this unique leap program you will have access to the real people of Tanzania – a privilege in itself to get beyond being just a tourist in this famous safari destination – you will make a difference to their day to day lives as you go about completing simple, yet sustainable development projects.. We can’t promise you’ll want to leave and come back to office life in the UK though.
6-10 weeks, starting at £2283

6. Assist start up businesses all over the globe

Projects Abroad host a variety of voluntary business internships in Mexico, Mongolia, China, Costa Rica and Sri Lanka. You’ll be working in local businesses helping them with general office duties – researching, writing briefs, attending meetings and contacting clients. Your colleagues will have a good grasp of English but will be keen to practise their conversational skills with you. Projects Abroad also offer placements in NGO’s in India, Mexico, South Africa, Vietnam and Jamaica. Here you get to learn how international development charities work and the problems they face. You can read more about this here.
If new business is where your interest lies then check out the Micro Finance projects in Cambodia, Ghana, Senegal and Tanzania. Projects Abroad provide a loan to individuals or groups to help them set up their business. When the loan is paid back, it gets passed on to another new start up. This is an exciting opportunity to see how small businesses start and how they overcome problems. You’ll get experience reading business plans, developing marketing strategies and managing money whilst teaching you how businesses work in a different country.

Once you’ve decided on the right creative project for you, use Patchwork to help make it happen. Show your friends and family all the things you need to fund, make and do so they can choose how they can help – whether that means chipping in to help pay for accommodation, offering to drive you to the airport or lending you a rucksack.
Have a look at our gap year Patchworks here to get some inspiration.

Whether you want to wash elephants, count coral-dwelling crustaceans or bottle-feed orphaned donkeys, here are our top five gap year experiences for animal lovers:

Head to Udaipur in Northern India with Pod Volunteer and spend your time at an animal rescue shelter whilst learning a bit of Hindi along the way. You’ll be helping to clean, feed and care for injured dogs, pigs, goats, cows and donkeys that have been rescued from the streets of Udaipur. You’ll be involved in rehabilitation, physiotherapy and assisting local vets to get these animals back on their hooves. You also get to help support a local initiative to help people care for their livestock and be part of an enthusiastic team that rescues over 3,500 animals a year.

Pod Volunteer is an award-winning, ethical non-profit that has been helping people experience incredible gap years since 2001 when its founders volunteered together and set up a charity in Tanzania. They know exactly what you want and need from a gap year and even won the Best Volunteering Organisation of 2015. Extra curricular activities include henna, yoga and cooking classes plus a not-to-be-missed trip to the Taj Mahal. You can find out some more details about the project here.
Volunteer for 2 – 12 weeks, starting from £695.

If you’re more of a fins and flippers fan, then volunteering in a marine aquarium in Mexico will likely whet your appetite. Working with sharks, crocodiles, marine birds and Olive Ridley turtles, you’ll be assisting the vets in their rehabilitation work. For added excitement, you’ll get to swim with sharks and sea-lions – if you’re feeling brave enough. Depending on your interests you can help run tours of the aquarium, observe reproductive behaviour in the marine wildlife or help organise local school visits to spread the word about marine conservation.

Outreach International started in 1997 after an emotional trip to a rubbish dump in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and has being sending volunteers all over the world ever since. They carefully pick their projects to ensure that the volunteering work you do is needed, valuable and helpful to the local community. Ethics and sustainability is at the heart of what they do so you can be confident that your volunteering is beneficial and appreciated. You can read more about this conservation project here.
From 1 month to 6 months. Starting from £1,650

If you love animals but want a bit of variety to your trip, try one of The Leap’s projects that combine animal conservation work with a bit of teaching, a splash of diving or some relaxing island hopping. If you feel most comfortable on horseback then 10 weeks in South Africa on a horse safari and conservation programme is ideal. Learn about anti-poaching efforts, help maintain the reserve and keep an eye on the local rhinos, elephants and leopards.

The Leap is a family-run company that care about your safety and enjoyment as much as your family do. They are also dedicated to responsible travel and ensure that around 65% of your fee gets spent in the country you’re visiting – paying locals, supporting families and facilitating projects.
6 – 10 weeks, starting at £2528

Big into bears? Head over to Romania with Oyster and spend your days hanging out with over 72 rescued bears. You’ll be preparing their food, monitoring how the little cubs are integrating and helping give tours of the sanctuary to schools and tourists to educate visitors about these loveable beasts. You’ll be staying in a comfortable apartment in Brasov with other volunteers where you can explore the beautiful city, go out for dinner or just relax after a day of serious bear care. If you’re feeling inspired, you can find out more here.

Oyster have a whole heap of animal projects you can help out with. So whether you’re into elephants, turtles or big game, they’ve got you covered. Oyster is another family-run business, with each member of its UK staff having taken a gap year and loved it so much that they wanted to help others experience one too. Each project is personally visited by the team so they know exactly that they’re offering you and can tell you just what to expect.
1-12 weeks, starting from £995

If you can’t pick just one favourite animal then the Zoo Assistant Internship project in Malaysia will tickle all your fancies. Another project from Oyster, this one sees you actively help change the zoo as it brings its conditions up to an internationally acceptable level. You’ll be working on enrichment for the animals – think hiding food for them to find, building platforms for them to climb up and providing natural materials for them to build nests and dens.

The zoo is proud of its large and natural enclosures, using moats and lush vegetations as a barrier between fingers and fur rather than fences and walls. Over 54 acres and more than 1000 animals means you’ll be kept busy during your time here. Plus you’re only an hour and a half away from bustling Kuala Lumpur for weekend trips. This trip is a great first step for anyone interested in veterinary care or simply for anyone with a love of animals and adventure.
2 weeks costs £1014, 4 weeks costs £1497

Gap years are fabulous for all the reasons you already know – memories, confidence, CV boosts and new friends. But they can also be a real hassle to fund. That’s where Patchwork can help. Show friends and family your plans so they can choose which part of your trip to treat you to – £100 from your mum towards your flights, £20 from aunt Sally for a night in a treehouse, £5 from your best mate to treat you to a local lunch.

Check out some of our readymade gap year Patchworks and get planning your trip.

Islands in Thailand, mountains in Nepal and high-rise cities in China. Asia is a huge continent (like ridiculously huge) with endless possibilities for gap year adventures – which is good to know but not massively helpful! So in an attempt to narrow your options down, here are a few of our favourite trips from a handful of organisations we genuinely recommend:

1. Teaching English abroad is a gap year staple. But this project isn’t teaching children, it’s teaching the monks of Bu Tum pagoda in Cambodia. The monks approached Pod Volunteer asking them to help find volunteers that could improve their skills. So they did. Enter you. After completing their temple duties in the morning, the monks have four hours with you in the afternoon to brush up on their language skills. You’ll spend the mornings planning your lessons and once a week you can join the monks on their weekly visits to rural communities, helping those in need.
This is a fascinating cultural exchange – you’ll be learning as much about the lives and teachings of the monks as you will be imparting your own language knowledge. You can find out some more details about the project here.
12 weeks – 6 months, starting at £1,850

2. Stay in a traditional longhouse with a balcony overlooking the Bornean jungle and spend your days with the cutest bears in the world – Sun Bears. These small beauties are seriously under threat, hunted for their meat and bile and kept illegally as pets.
The rehabilitation centre where you’ll be based is working hard to make their lives better and get them ready to head back out into the wild. One of the most important tasks is creating exciting and interesting enrichment activities for the bears to help them practise their wild bear skills – hunting, climbing and building nests. Without these vital skills, they wont last long back out in the jungle. This gap year project might be short but it’s definitely sweet.
2-4 weeks, starting at £1168

3. Be there at the start of something great. Blue Ventures are building a new marine conservation base in Timor-Leste to conduct research in the highly diverse but under-researched Coral Triangle and the first set of volunteers will be heading out there this year. Despite it’s small size, Coral Triangle is home to more than 75% of all the world’s coral reefs, not to mention a plethora of fish, sharks, whales, dolphins and turtle species. You will join Blue Venture’s team of scientists as they collect data from these previously un-surveyed waters. You’ll be kept busy diving, helping with beach clean-ups and other conservation and environmental awareness projects.
The work you do here will be of great help to the marine scientist community – and you get to live on a beautiful island while you do it. If you want to get involved, you can find more details about the project here.
5-6 weeks, price dependant on diving ability.

4. Learn the world’s most widely spoken language, live and work in a family home and experience a culture like no other – spend your gap year Au Pairing in China. For around 30 hours a week you’ll look after your little colleague – playing with them, practising English and taking them to and from school. The rest of the time is yours to discover this incredible country and practise your Mandarin. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of help in the shape of great teachers and 60 class hours during your three months. Experience huge cities, new foods and a completely different culture, just go here for more details.
3 months for £695

5. For a post-uni gap year with a difference, hop on a plane to Hanoi, Vietnam and get stuck into an International Development internship, working on issues like drug abuse, prostitution, disabled people’s rights and health problems. They need help with research, report writing, staff training, marketing and admin. Get real hands on experience of working on a human rights project whilst living in fast paced, colourful Hanoi. Stay with a host family and spend your weekends exploring this beautiful country.
From 8 weeks, starting from £2,295

Gap years, before or after uni, are a brilliant way to get some real life work experience alongside some real life adventure. We know university fees are huge these days so use Patchwork to help fund your CV enhancing trip. Friends and family can chip in £20 towards your diving training, £5 towards some beer at the end of a hard day of building toilets or lend you their copy of Lonely Planet Vietnam so you don’t have to splash out on one.

Check out our readymade gap year Patchworks here for some inspiration.