General Gap Year Websites
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Top Sites
The Site – Started life as a book about gap years and is now a useful website covering a variety of youth subjects including travel.
Links for Taking a Gap Year
Bed & Learn – This Italian help exchange network can be used in English though a lot of the listings themselves are in Italian. The idea here is hosts offer a bed to travellers who can teach them something: English or another language, cooking, dancing, massage, etc. Bed and breakfasts are also encouraged to join so Belearners, as users of this site are known, can organise a pottery course for guests, do some renovation, or expand the culinary diversity of the menu.
Best Gap Year – Provides gap year courses, work placements and travel opportunities abroad.
Culture Go Go – Volunteers teach hosts in Spain, Italy and Latin America English for a few hours a day with games, activities and sports and in return your host family provides accommodation and food. Basic membership is free.
Gapwork – A stylish site particularly strong on working in Australia and Europe. Alongside the free online resources, Gapwork sell gap packs designed specifically for working travellers.
GigRove – Skilled travellers are connected with local startups who have a place to spare and need help with short term tasks.
Great Gap Years – Planning, keeping safe and working during your gap year.
Handytravelers – There’s a picture of an elephant and a search button and not much else on the home page. Click the search button and a couple of hundred volunteer positions are revealed.
HelpStay – From the oldest, we move to one of the newest hospitality networks. The founder personally checks every project listed on the site and the network is quickly fulfilling its long term goal of enabling travellers to travel the world perpetually on a limited budget.
HelpX – An online listing of host organic farms, non-organic farms, farmstays, homestays, ranches, lodges, B&Bs, backpackers hostels and even sailing boats who invite volunteer helpers to stay with them short-term in exchange for food and accommodation.
Hovos – This general purpose help exchange network’s unique selling point is a chance to use the site without paying until a deal has been struck with a host. A quick seach in Thailand found five hosts, where we switched over to the map to get a handy overview where the projects are located.
iGapYear – As expected from the SeasonWorkers team this site offers a wide range of resources and ideas for getting the best from your gap year.
KeyBoots – With KeyBoots, so long as you don’t mind ‘pitching in’ by working, you can find short-term and seasonal jobs that provide a place to stay that’s right for you, wherever you happen to be traveling around the globe. The site has everything from organic farming and seasonal fruit picking to bar-tending and domestic jobs.
Se7en – Concentrating on low cost and free to join social and environmental volunteering, Se7en’s 5000 members can peruse over 700 host projects in 124 countries.
The Site – Started life as a book about gap years and is now a useful website covering a variety of youth subjects including travel.
Springboard – A well established organisation for UK students aged 16 to 18 looking for careers, job vacancies, education or gap year information and advice.
Staydu – On Staydu locals from all over the world offer their accommodation for work, for money or for free.
Tuanys.com – Use the clickable map to find activities, trips, volunteer work and paid jobs around the globe.
Volunteers Base – VB promotes itself as a free alternative to HelpX, WWOOF, WorkAway and similar websites, and, in the couple of years since it begun, seems to be ticking along quite nicely as an easy to use website with a good number of hosts and volunteers.
Workaway – A website set up to facilitate contact between travellers and host families who are prepared to offer food and accommodation in return for a few light hours work per day. Work can be anything from gardening or maintenance through to child care or shopping.
Working Traveller – A work exchange network with the same name (but otherwise no connection) as our blog Working Traveller matches thousands of work placements around the world with travellers looking for work experience. There’s a noticeable career ethos present, with the great, good and no good – on both sides of the table – filtered by a handshake reference system similar to that used by ebay.
Worldpackers – Click on a pin on a map and details of volunteering for hostels worldwide are given. It is also possible to narrow down hosts by selecting your best skill: cleaning, nightshift, tour guide, social media, etc.
WWOOF – The international website of the reknowned WWOOF network of organic farms. Volunteers looking to exchange their labour for bed and board in countries without a national organisation may be able to find host farms here.
The Year Out Group – An association of leading year out organisations offers information and guidance for young people and their parents and advisers.
Yoga Trade – Yoga Trade links yoga instructors, students, and wellness professionals with work trade and job opportunities around the world. A handful of roles are listed everyday, but considering the niche we wouldn’t expect too many more though the site seems busy rather than neglected.