Gap year & Travel News

Hola from the Pacific Coast of Ecuador! Three weeks in and the team (Rachel, Serena, Charlie, Aman, Alex and Joel and Ellie)  have been boldly enjoying and relishing in their new homes near the sand in the gorgeous little village of Estero de Plátano. We all live on the same street (there are about three [...]

Update from our Ecuador Leapers: The first week of volunteering  in the Andes has gone really well. Everyone is settled into our comfortable homestay and the food is great. This week we seem to have done more work destroying than actually building! Much of the land arouend the village has become overgrown with eucalyptus spouts [...]

Hi, I’m Alex  – I’m in my second year studying History of Art at University, after taking a wonderful gap year with The Leap! My Gap Year began with The Leap in January 2009 when I jetted off to Ecuador (in South America) for 10 weeks on a team project. I spent some the most [...]

The Ecuador team has officially finished their time volunteering at the coast and what a great end to an amazing 10 weeks! The classroom is nearly done, only lacking windows and doors (which will be crafted and installed by the community). We painted the classroom a beautiful blue inside and out and laid half of [...]

Hi Leap Team! A late reply from me to say thankyou for the £50 for reccommending Rose Gunnell on the Tanzania programme, I hope she’s getting on well! I just thought I would email you this painting I did of the kids in Chilcapamba. I loved it there! Hope you’re all well Gemma Goodmore

Team 1: This week went by really fast for the Leapers in Ecuador, with a lot of variety of activities.  We started work on the artisan market, preparing the roof for thatching and getting rid of some weeds in the ground. On Tuesday afternoon we visited the nearby town of Cotacachi, which is famous for its handmade [...]

Hello from the rainforest! We left our hostel in Quito on Sunday for the six hour bus journey to the rainforest. It sounds a horrendously long time, but the busses were extremely comfortable with (almost) lie flat seats (really puts National Express to shame, I imagine) and the scenery was nothing less than spectacular, as [...]

Hola! The teams first week in Chilcapamba (the community in the Andes) went very well.  We spent the week building a new house for an elderly woman in the community, as the wall of her old house had caved in and it was unsafe for her to live in.  We spent one day removing the [...]

When she was 7 years old, Lovely Leaper Izzy Talks won a WWF competition to have a butterfly named after her. Now, aged 18 and on her gap year Izzy had headed to Ecuador with The Leap to help to conserve the Rainforest in which her butterfly namesake lives and (hopefully!) bump into ‘Pronophila Isobelae’ [...]

These are some of the new faces working out in Ecuador to make sure you get the most out of your gap year experience. Lucas Emmerson is the volunteer coordinator at Yanapuma Foundation in Ecuador. His main responsibility is organizing the volunteer and group placements. In 2007 he completed his studies in International Development with [...]