Global Opportunities
This is where students can find global opportunities for travel and study.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel is limited for the foreseeable future. The list of organizations are here for future planning ideas. Note: Some of the programs offer virtual experiences.
If a student would like to add an opportunity to the list, they may submit a suggestion at the bottom of the page.
Global Travel and Study Opportunities
Before you explore the resources below, please read these articles:
Hostelworld "12 Tips on Ethical Volunteering and How to Avoid the Voluntourism Trap"
Yes Magazine "12 Tips for More Equitable Travel"
This article is geared more toward adults and/or independent travelers.
AFS offers study abroad and community service abroad experiences for high school students. Service opportunities are available in over 20 countries worldwide.
With AMIGOS de las Americas, students live and work with community members on projects related to health, construction, or the environment. In addition to providing students with a meaningful experience abroad, AMIGOS helps individuals improve their Spanish and develop their leadership skills.
Birthright AFRICA inspires youth and young adults of African descent ages 13 – 30 to explore their cultural roots and legacy of innovation within the United States and select nations in Africa as a birthright. Through travel and project-based learning in collaboration with our partners, we aim to instill pride, enhance confidence, and spark the creativity of our Scholars to fulfill their leadership and entrepreneurial aspirations.
Educational Destinations offers custom educational student social justice/ethics trips opportunities to several popular destinations.
Epilogos brings volunteers to El Salvador to work on community projects with a focus on education, water, and health. The website provides information about the organization's projects and mission, as well as how to volunteer either from the United States or on a service trip.
The Experiment in International Living
The Experiment in International Living is the nation’s most experienced and respected provider of international education and experiential learning for high school students. For 85 years, our summer study abroad programs have allowed students to explore the world in a personal, meaningful way, and to develop new, enduring friendships through hands-on cultural experiences and homestays in 25 countries.
Global Exchange’s Reality Tours are not designed to provide immediate solutions or remedies to the world’s most intractable problems, nor are they simply a kind of voyeurism. Rather, Reality Tours are meant to educate people about how we, individually and collectively, contribute to global problems, and, then, to suggest ways in which we can contribute to positive change locally and internationally. (Note: This is a program that would require an adult chaperone.)
Offering high school summer programs, Global Routes allows students a chance to live in a homestay in a rural area of one of 13 countries. Their programs include an in-depth orientation to the country and to the volunteer project, as well as adventure excursions after the volunteer trip is complete. Students typically are placed in a group of 18 youth and two group leaders.
Global Works bases their adventure travel trips on a community service component, where students can engage in meaningful service projects with local people. They provide summer trips to 15 different countries, and some of their trips also include a language or homestay component.
Global Volunteers engages short-term volunteers in local development projects in 20 different countries worldwide. They offer 150 different service-learning travel opportunities and also have special projects for groups.
Transforming communities, environments, and students’ lives through meaningful cross-cultural service and travel adventures. If you’re searching for something more than just a typical summer trip; if you want to travel with real purpose, then GoBeyond. We go beyond ordinary high school travel programs and build cross-cultural community service summer trips perfectly geared to your interests and curiosities.
Students return home with expanded consciousness, energized by their power to understand, work cooperatively, and make a difference in the world. How? We synthesize history and cultural learning, friendships with courageous people living with purpose, and project-based activities that build global citizenship skills.
Rustic Pathways has been operating student travel programs for more than 36 years. We offer summer travel for middle and high school students, customized teacher-led trips for school groups, and gap year programs for recent high school grads.
Since 1996, SPI High School Study Abroad offers intensive French, Italian and Spanish language immersion, cultural leadership and volunteer service summer programs in Spain, France, Italy, and Costa Rica.
Our mission is authentic travel. We partner with local experts to create enriching experiences that teach teens to be savvy travelers. Every program is designed to be hands-on—emphasizing doing and feeling, in addition to just seeing, so teens discover what it means to live like a local in every country we visit.
United Planet is a non-profit organization with a mission to create a global community, one relationship at a time. We connect volunteers who want to make a difference with communities in more than 30 countries, where they learn, teach, work, engage and immerse themselves in a culture outside their comfort zone. Note: United Planet has a virtual volunteer program.
Travel with meaning and intention. Genuinely experience a different way of life while exploring your interests and developing valuable skills for your future. Learn more about our programs throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.