What is a Gap For Good Program?

Rustic Pathways Gap For Good Program allows you to travel to remote corners of the world, where Rustic Pathways has established year-round operations, and lets you settle in for longer term community service work. These programs tend to be lower in cost and have a higher level of cultural immersion than our Scheduled Gap Programs, because they allow you to live in one place for an extended period of time. The length of an individual Gap For good session ranges from usually a minimum of 4 weeks to up to a semester. When students are looking to fully incorporate Gap For Good into a Gap Year, you tend to combine various Gap For Good service initiatives in more than one location.

For example, if you were looking to take an entire Gap For Good year in Thailand, you would want to combine a few different regional service initiatives to make up your year. Teaching English to orphans and refugees at our Hilltribe Orphanage, working in a school in Mae Sariang helping to organize and run English classes, working on service projects in the villages surrounding the Ricefields Basehouse, settling into a small fishing village in the Southern Thai islands where you will work and fish with the locals – these are just a few of the combinations possible within a single country. Wherever you choose to go, you’ll find yourself fully immersed in parts of the world that see very few outsiders while having amazing cultural experiences and helping with meaningful service work.

A great benefit of the level of personal flexibility when creating Gap For Good programs is that they can serve as the perfect way to connect two or three of our Scheduled Gap Year programs. For students that find themselves drawn to only a handful of our Scheduled Gap Year programs, you can combine these with a few longer term Gap For Good sessions to make up a full Gap Year. Want to connect our Scheduled Gap Year program in Peru with those in New Zealand and Thailand only, but still want a full Gap Year? No problem – fill the Gap with our community service opportunities!

If you have any questions about the Gap for Good Programs, please send an email to our Gap Year Desk at gap@rusticpathways.com.