Gap Year In New Zealand from Lattitude

Lattitude’s New Zealand gap year program offers a wide range of exciting and challenging placements and is one of our original destinations.

Lattitude New Zealand gap year volunteers come back raving about their experiences. An New Zealand gap year requires motivation, flexibility and a positive attitude. Spend your gap year in New Zealand in a boarding school helping children with their studies and after school or if the great outdoors is you; volunteer in either a YMCA outdoor camp, or a conservation project.

So, say hello to your Lattitude New Zealand Gap Year.

Our New Zealand gap year schools program is based throughout the country. Each school comes with its own challenges, atmosphere and experience.

Lattitude has two New Zealand gap years Schools Assistant programs, one lasting 7 months and the other 11 months. Your duties might include, helping in the boarding house, assisting teachers, helping with sports coaching, music, art or drama. You may also help with field-trips and the school’s outdoor education program.

A boarding school is a 24/7 experience and it is more like a small community than somewhere to work. A New Zealand gap year spent in a boarding school will give you the opportunity to use all your talents and really get involved.

This is a new opportunity for 2009 and you can spend your gap year in New Zealand working with children and adults in the majesty of the New Zealand countryside.

You will spend your New Zealand gap year working in a YMCA camp. They are looking for people who are energetic, creative and compassionate, if that’s you then you could be off to New Zealand on your gap year. You will spend your New Zealand gap year supporting instructors with all sorts of activities from cooking and acting to hiking and canoeing as well as helping the camp with its admin and cleaning. Each volunteer will be expected to have some outdoor skills, and will have the chance to expand their skills while you are there.

This is a unique package and your will spend part of your gap year in New Zealand and part in Australia, protecting their precious environment and seeing the environmental challenges that face their unrivalled flora and fauna.

Our volunteers spend five months in New Zealand and Australia. You will start off working in NZ and the rotate around two other locations in Australia. Each location presents the volunteer with a different environmental challenge. The program consists of tree planting, cutting scrub, monitoring wild life and replacing lost vegetation. Whilst this can be hard work, it is truly rewarding to know that you spent your gap year in New Zealand and Australia preserving their famous landscapes.

“The Team Leader, taught us to make a traditional type of bread. It quickly became a ritual at the end of each work day, to tide us over after finishing the project and before enjoying dinner together! We all took turns at cooking, and with the washing up afterwards. Evenings were fun there, in the middle of nowhere. The sunsets were incredible and stars unbelievably bright and clear. I was really sad to leave.”
A Conservation Program Volunteer

“I really enjoyed it out there, everyone was friendly and welcoming. Living and working in a boarding school will totally immerse you in the culture. I found the worse experience was saying goodbye because after 6 months the school had become my home.”
A Schools Assistant Volunteer