Tom, 22, from Exeter tells us about a typical day for a KAMP USA participant at Indian Head Camp

7am Working in the kitchen means pretty early starts to prepare breakfast for the hundreds of campers and staff, but we blast the radio up and have a laugh!

9am After serving sausage and egg muffins and clearing up, I’ve got a few hours to chill out before lunch. I check my emails and update my facebook status!

11.30am  Back to the kitchen t...

Zoe Ball, 21, from Essex has been living it up Stateside for the past few months on the Work America programme.  



On arrival, I was pretty apprehensive about what my summer would bring as I had no pre-arranged job or accommodation. It was quite a nerve racking experience but also enthralling as it just meant I had the freedom to go anywhere and do anything!

Luckily for me, I managed to meet a group of BUNACers through the Facebook page who were in ...

Robert Wheatley, 26, from Merseyside has spent an incredible summer on Sports Coaching South Africa. He tells us what life is really like at Umzingisi camp!  

A typical day?

A standard day as a sports volunteer sees us leaving Umzingisi base camp at around 10am.
We’ll generally travel about 20-30 mins on one of the VW sponsored ‘Soccer Busses’ to our first school. We coach at 3 schools a day for about 90...

Nicky Torkington, 26, from Hampshire is currently living it up on the Work Canada programme after taking the 23rd June group flight to Vancouver!

Hi All,

Well I've been here over a week now so thought that I better send you all an update. First of all, I have to say that Vancouver is an amazing city and I’m really loving the place - so much so that I have decided to stay here f...

Steve Gellett, 20, from Liverpool, kicked off his Work New Zealand gap year in style last February when he took BUNAC’s group flight to Auckland…

BUNAC’s group flight

The group flight was great and I’m still in touch with most of the people from there – many of them pass through the hostel I’m staying at and bar I work at.

Travels and plans

I took part in a Kiwi Bus adventure around the whole of the North & south island – I loved it! My plan is to stay in Ne...

BUNAC’s latest Teach and Travel China members left the UK on 30th July for a fun-filled six-month adventure. Kianie, TTC assistant, tells us about the first week of the programme for the new recruits!

After months of planning and organising, the day had finally arrived; interns arrived from all around the globe to begin their month of training, bonding and cultural acclimatising here in Beijing. Interns arriving from the UK, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia, America and Australia, were all...

 


Jessica Brown, 20, from Ipswich recently retuned from an amazing two months on Volunteer Ghana

Why Volunteer Ghana?

I chose to arrange BUNAC’s volunteer programme because there was a lot of gr...

Shay Barry, 30, from Co. Louth has recently returned from an action-packed 33 weeks on Volunteer South Africa.

Programme:  Volunteer South Africa (Boulders Beach Penguin Colony)

Why Volunteer South Africa?

I wanted to be in South Africa for the World Cup and BUNAC allowed me to do this cheaper than any other volunteer organisation I could find. The information on the website was quite extensive and th...

Leoni Jesner, 20, from Glasgow is having the summer of a lifetime in L.A. on the BUNAC Work America programme!

For as long as I can remember, everything I heard and read about Los Angeles excited me.  It’s made out to be a world of its own, and I can safely say that my time spent here has confirmed this. I decided to participate on BUNAC’s Work America because i...

Hayley Rivers, 24, from Essex is a previous Work Australia participant who loved the experience so much she ended up getting a visa to stay for an extra year – dedication!

Work?
 
I saw someone doing outreach in Bondi Junction and asked if they were hiring. They passed my number on to the manager and the rest is history.
I worked for Fitness First as a membership consultant, firstly in Sydney and then in Melbourne after my travelling. The job was based around selling gym memberships and making appointments for people to come and s...

Will and Lilly are currently on BUNAC’s Volunteer Peru programme working on projects in a kindergarten and a zoo. Will tells us how their adventure is going so far.

Arrived all fine and settling in nicely in Peru!
 
INTEJ, BUNAC’s partners in Peru, have been really really good out here. The orientation was great and they've generally been very helpful with getting us settled in etc.
 
The zoo is great and I’m having an amazing time with the people there. They don’t speak any English, so I have had to pick up enough to get by but I’m...

BUNAC's Aimee, who is currently based in our New York office before heading out to Camp for the summer, has put together a handful of free or cheap must-dos in the Big Apple!

Central Park
Where else can you find a tranquil spot to spend your afternoon daydreaming in the sun right in the centre of one of the busiest and fast-paced cities in the world? Sit under a tree with your favourite book, people-watch to your hearts content, or lap up the diversity by wandering, (and getting lost) around the ever-winding paths. Strawberry Fi...

Living & Working in Australia for 7 months

With BUNAC's help it took me a bout 4 days in Sydney to land a job bartending at the Imperial Hotel in Condobolin in the Australian outback pro...

After what has been, without doubt, the best seven months of my life I am coming home. I leave Whistler tomorrow morning and am spending one week in Vancouver Island before flying back to England.
 
It has been an incredible adventure I have been on. Arriving in Canada knowing no-one, with nowhere to live and no job, just following a dream. The dream materialised into something better than I could ever have imagined...

I have made friends from all over the world - Canada, USA, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, France, Czech Republic, England...

It is almost a year since we left New Zealand, after a wonderful 14-month Work New Zealand experience, and we are still constantly reliving many wonderful memories and photos.

Whilst in Hokitika on the West Coast of South Island, we had the opportunity of meeting Gernot and Gisela, two Germans who have lived there for over 40 years. They live the ultimate simple life in a house that they built, powered by an electricity generator for only 2 hours per day, where you have to take buckets of water from the rainwater tank inside to flush the ...

After a sheltered two years at university, I decided I needed to see a bit more of the world and gain some independence. I wanted to try and earn some money over the summer, and at the same time experience some different surroundings. I decided to go on Work America.

I waitressed at a private members’ club on Martha’s Vineyard first of all, then did casual work in a supermarket and spent the rest of the time travelling and holidaying.

The experience definitely lived up to my expectations. I feel like I have discovered a lot more about myself and my ab...

This opportunity to volunteer in Costa Rica has definitely made me far more confident in travelling on my own. When I first landed in San Jose I felt a little overwhelmed at the prospect of volunteering in a country so far away from home for an entire two months. Luckily during the two day orientation in San Jose I met many other travellers and after swapping a few stories I was ready to face my next two months!

I was first placed with a wonderfully open and inquisitive host family in San Jose who whisked me away to their holiday ...

Everything so far has been perfect and i am loving my time in South Africa! The group we came out with were amazing and we all get on so well.
 
I love working at my environmental project so much that im actually extending my project time there till June - there is so much i can help with and the people i work with are amazing (and it's only a five minute walk from my house). My host family are amazing and i felt like part of their family from day 1 which has been really good. 

We have done so much stuff it's hard to write it all down. E...

We got the boat to Siem Reap from Battanbang which is reccommended by the Lonely Planet as one of the must do's in Cambodia. On the ticket it had a picture of a speed boat, but the little wooden boat did just fine!

It took a good 6 and a half hours, through many floating villages - so many children playing in the water, even drinking it... and waving at any opportunity. The scenery made up for the numb bum, sitting on a hard wooden seat for the whole time! We often had to speedily pull the material sides of the boat down so as not to get taken out by t...

My host family are really lovely and the accommodation is very comfortable. The view across the valley from the balcony upstairs is nothing short of stunning. The food is great, although I think I may start to tire of rice by the end. 

My Spanish is coming along, and I've stared a beginners class in latin dancing - no one speaks English at the class, but I think I'm following okay.

The children at the school are very lively and most of them seem quite keen to learn English. Obviously, a typical school day is nothing like that back home!

Ki...

I can't believe the Winter Olympics are over already and I have no idea where to start. It has been a crazy but amazing few weeks!

Opening ceremony
It all started back on 12th Feb when the opening ceremony was held in Vancouver. I went into Whistler village and watched it on a big screen in the village with hundreds of people. From that moment on it was pretty obvious it was going to be one long party. What was also evident was how patriotic the Canadians are. They are all so proud to be Canadian ...

The end of our time in Wellington has come, so as it’s the last time we will have easy access to a computer we will give all you a little update of our final days in the Capital.

Skydiving, black water rafting and a Maori village
Julia went away with her parents between Christmas and New Year to see a little bit of the North Island, and even bullied the whole family into jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane to do yet another skydive. She went black water rafting in the Waitomo Caves, visited a living Maori thermal village, ...