Independent Gap Year Advice
and Support for Young People

Our mission:

To provide young people with impartial information and advice on taking a gap year or shorter break from formal education, and to encourage and enable disabled and otherwise disadvantaged young people to undertake challenging gap year opportunities.

Contact Callum Russell, founder and director of CrystalEyes, was a gap year volunteer in Peru and has been blind since birth.
Email callum@independentgapadvice.org, telephone 07557 916996

We receive no benefit, financial or otherwise, from the organisations we recommend for the advice we offer.

Contents of the website:

There are gap year advice sections on planning a gap year, fundraising, travel safety, and the ethics of overseas volunteering.

There is an advice document for parents and sixth form advisers.

There is a database of gap year organisations that we know and recommend.

The website includes 18 case studies of young people who undertook challenging gap year projects, written by the volunteers themselves. Some of the volunteers are disabled.

If you would like information or advice:

You can contact us on any aspect of taking a full gap year or shorter break from formal education. For example:

• I have decided to take a gap year; where do I start?
• You might ask us to suggest reputable organisations with projects that match your interests.
• You might find an organisation on the internet but not on our database, and ask if we know it.

Email us through our website  We have twenty years experience of the gap year sector,