Gap Year Expeditions, Global Volunteering & Conservation Projects – Greenforce

Parents Page

This page is designed for parents, especially for those whose child is thinking of taking a gap year and heading off to a faraway destination, one that will probably be making you a little jealous and perhaps a little uncertain too. Here, we outline our own safety procedures, provide you with information on the gap year industry and highlight the benefits of a gap year. There are also some useful links to further your research.

For independent press articles on Greenforce from The Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian and ITN News:

Click on the About Us tab above.

Safety

You, as parents, are entitled to worry about your children. Our destinations range from Fiji to Papua New Guinea, Belize to Tanzania and no matter where your child goes, there are always some risk attached. We attempt to minimise these risks through a number of effective measures.
• Risk assessments – Prior to each phase, we carry out thorough risk assessments in our locations to determine the current standards and to improve them before the participants land in country.
• External guidance – The news from the countries we work in is monitored daily so that we are fully aware of any incidents or unrest. We adhere to the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) so if they deem a country to be unsafe, we follow their lead. We are also members of the Year Out Group (YOG).
• Evacuation procedures – Given the remote location and extreme nature of some of our projects, we carry satellite phones, which means that if something untoward does happen, emergency helicopter services are on standby to evacuate.
• UK Staff – All of our core projects are run by UK staff. It adds a further level of protection and security, as well as helping participants to adjust to a new country and culture.

Gap Year Advice

So, your child has returned from a gap year fair laden down with bags of brochures and talking about all the gap year opportunities available. But even before you start to consider which company to trust, you may want to observe what gap year options are available. For overseas gap year opportunities, the most popular forms are:

Volunteering
• Teaching
• Wildlife conservation
• Environmental conservation
• Childcare/healthcare
• Community development

Jobs
Of course the jobs and internships available are plentiful and it is

hard to categorise each industry. However, these are some of the enticing fields that gap year students choose to work in. The key

to working gap years is finding which destination to work in.

• Teaching
• Childcare/healthcare
• Agriculture
• Hospitality
• Construction

Study abroad
• Learn a language
• Internships
• Courses (such as cooking, art, design)

Expeditions
• Trekking
• Skiing
• Mountaineering

Sport
• Qualifications. E.g. Ski instructor courses
• Activity based programmes. Typically a camp of some sort where participants improve in their desired sport.

Some of these overlap. For example, our Tanzania expedition combines wildlife conservation, community development and volunteering, as many gap year options do from similar organisations.

For more information about Greenforce, such as our company history, please visit the About Us section.