Can I visit my home country or somewhere I am very familiar with?

We encourage you to use our opportunities to do something new, and go somewhere unfamiliar. This achieves maximum impact for adventure, cultural exchange and boosting global experiences!

When making allocation decisions, we will usually prioritise giving placements to visit e/g Spain to someone that has few links there. If you are from there/nearby then we would usually aim not to send you there as a participant (perhaps as a co-ordinator, email us to find out..!).

These decisions will be made during our allocations process, when we seek to achieve most impact by linking people with projects that maximise access to opportunities for everyone. We strive to take onboard your preferences and weigh those against our mission in order to provide the best possible outcomes for everyone.

Of course, if you have a compelling reason to visit a country/region that you have established links to, then just tell us when you apply - in your application statement. E.g if you are studying the language/culture of Spain, then we would think thats a great reason to visit! But if you'd just like to visit your home country or a culturally similar neighbouring area, or somewhere you spend a great deal of time, then we'd encourage you to consider other options. 

Sometimes people ask us if they can go home (or visit a neighbouring country) through our project, usually we'd say that you should seek to go somewhere less familiar. Sometimes people live in a country and ask to join our programme there as a participant, we can consider case-by-case but may well feel that it falls beyond our mission to assist with this request - in such cases we might consider you for other roles with us in that country (e.g as a coordinator) or otherwise invite you to apply for programmes elsewhere.

Ours is an adventure programme! So please be open minded and think about going somewhere new!