Gap Year Opportunities and Why You Should Get Involved

19 August 2013

So now the wait is over and you have your results. Perhaps you’ve decided that you’ve had enough of education and have deferred your entry to university for a year, or you just aren’t going to go to university. We have a wide array of career development programmes, working holidays and volunteering projects that can provide career and life defining experiences to help provide some direction for you after your completion of college.  

Internships:

With the job market over-supplied with skilled labour, many young and talented people are finding themselves not obtaining the job that they went to university to train towards. For many hard-to-access industries, relevant work experience is pivotal in the recruitment decision process. Therefore if you want to attend relevant, career enhancing work experiences then we would suggest that you follow this link to view what we have to offer:
Internships



Furthermore, our UK Internship programme is a successive market leader in our industry, after 16 years of providing high quality professional work experiences:
Internships in London

Paid Work Experiences & Working Holidays:

Many people take gap years to obtain life experiences, but at a major financial cost. We have some brilliant programmes where you can earn a wage whilst living in a completely foreign environment, procuring brand new life experiences that you can bring home with you and share with your friends. To view these unique programmes, check out this link:
Paid Work Experiences

Funded Career Development Programmes:

The Leonardo da Vinci programme offers a 10 week experience across multiple locations in the EU, to provide candidates with the opportunity to obtain vital work experience, whilst improving their language skills. This is fully funded by the European Union, so it is an incredible programme offering a 2 week language course, 8 week internship, flights, 10 weeks of accommodation and a 300 euro stipend (for the whole 10 weeks) to candidates that get accepted onto the programme. Please note that it is highly competitive to get on this programme, so get your applications in quickly!
Leonardo da Vinci Programme

Volunteering Projects:

Our volunteering projects are split into two different categories; Community and Conservation.

Perhaps you feel passionate about the low standards of education across third world countries, and you would like to provide a hand to teach basic numeracy and English literacy to children from under privileged backgrounds. Or alternatively you would like to assist a female empowerment programme in a deprived country, where you can help educate and install self-belief in women who have been oppressed throughout their life. Our community projects cover a wide range of humanitarian issues, and if you would like to offer assistance to any of these causes follow this link to view what destinations are available:
Community Volunteering



If you are a passionate environmentalist, and have a deep interest in the natural world and its preservation then one of our conservation projects should be of interest to you. Whether you want to volunteer in a game reserve and work alongside the “Big 5,” or obtain your PADI certificate, and volunteer on a Whale Shark Research facility we have an incredible array of exciting projects that will help provide you with greater knowledge within conservation.
Conservation Volunteering



We hope that these pointers will give you a clearer picture of what you want to do with your gap year, should you be taking one. Just be sure that if you see any programmes you find of interest, email us on workandvolunteerteam@twinuk.com to submit an enquiry.

Written By Alex Lee & James Ong-Fox