The Gapsummer Projects
Gap summer top 5 Projects in Association with Madventurer
On a 5 week Madventurer project you can combine different work options (e.g. teaching plus building) to get the most out of your experience. You can also choose to combine two 5 week projects in any Madventurer destination.
There are loads of different development projects and placements abroad in Africa, South & Central America, Asia, and the South Pacific that you can get involved with on a gap summer.
1. Use your head and teach Visit Mad Teachers
Get up in front of 40 smiling faces and introduce hangman and other learning games that most of the kids will never have played before. Improving education standards is the key to the development of rural communities. This has a direct impact on the future of the whole community. However, all too often these rural communities find it difficult to attract teachers, who are instead attracted to the bright lights and even brighter prospects of the city schools.
In small communities, class sizes are often large, so as a teacher you can play an important role in reducing class sizes and injecting enthusiasm, energy and a fresh style of teaching, whilst gaining knowledge and experience from local teachers. Your combined efforts can lead to a sustainable improvement in education standards.
Where can you do teaching projects? Pretty much anywhere in the world, but be aware of language barriers.
2. Become a volunteer 'brickie' Visit Mad Builders
Fancy spending your summer in a ditch digging? Perhaps rather surprisingly is that a lot of people do. Based in rural areas and working on projects that small rural communities really need, you could help build a school or local clinic, or you could be working on projects to improve drainage or sanitation by building a toilet block.
No previous building experience is usually necessary and you certainly don't need to be muscle bound to work on these projects. Experienced local masons, carpenters and craftsmen will lead the group, teaching you the required skills and supervising your work. On the building projects you could be digging foundations, laying cement, building walls, plastering or painting.
3. See real medicine in action Visit Mad Medics
Working in the health sector in the developing world is a real challenge. For social, cultural, but mainly economic reasons, people don't seek medical attention until their condition is incredibly advanced or they are in serious pain. Coupled with poor health and sanitary provisions, medics in these countries are faced with conditions that we don't see in the West.
If you are studying or hoping to study medicine or a subject allied to medicine, there is a real opportunity to gain useful and different experience. Overworked doctors and nurses value any help you can give, and in return are happy to give you the opportunity to gain experience of the practise of medicine.
Of course what you can do will depend on your previous medical experience. Pre-university students can expect to shadow doctors on ward visits and help nurses with basic tasks, such as dressing wounds and looking after patients. Students on their elective or at more advanced stages of their studies will be able to specialise and gain more practical experience in a particular area of study.
4. Save Our Seaturtles! Visit Mad Current Projects
Everyone knows the world should be greener. There are plenty of exciting conservation projects that are in real need of volunteers that aren't full of swampy-like characters.
Day in the life of a SOS turtle volunteer in Tobago
- Turtles usually nest at night, so daytime activities during the nesting season depend on the volunteers interests or talents and are usually limited to the beach or school / village outreach exercises or day time boat patrols of the rural beaches and of course catching up on sleep.
- The volunteer Beach Patrol operates in 5 hour long night shifts, though some people may choose to do an all nighter or split a shift with a friend.
- The first shift runs from 8pm ñ 1am.
- The second shift runs from 1am ñ 6am.
- In the case of patrollers based in the north-east of the island, near the rural beaches, patrols are a dusk to dawn adventure and so shifts would alternate from one night to the next.
5. Find the next Thiery Henry Visit Sportventurer
Why not use your gap year and passion for sport to make a difference in parts of the world where some children may not have had the same opportunities to play and be coached as you might have had?
