In the early 1990s some students wanted a break from study – a "gap year", although the term wasn't yet in common use. They approached their geography professor, Peter Slowe, about travelling and working in Eastern Europe. It was hard to find opportunities for travel combined with work experience, so Peter set about arranging for the students to go and teach English in Romania where he knew some fellow geographers. This was how Projects Abroad began in 1992.

Until 1997, we were a small, family-run organisation with just two part-time staff sending university students to teach English in Eastern Europe. But with more and more people taking time out on academic and work-related breaks, and with many developing countries in need of self-funded volunteers, our organisedvolunteer travel programmes started to mushroom around the world. Our volunteers can still teach English in Eastern Europe, but can also do many other types of work in many other places.

We help to create local employment wherever we send volunteers. We employ many people directly and provide plenty of work indirectly through the services we provide for volunteers. We have also devolved various "Head Office" functions, such as management accountancy which is done in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Design which is done in Mexico.

Having so many colleagues around the world means that we have an extensive network of local knowledge, enabling us to channel the skills of our volunteers to places they are really needed.

Projects Abroad today

Projects Abroad is still a family-run business, but twenty people now work in our office in Sussex, not far from the university where Peter Slowe used to teach. With nearly 700 trained staff in our destinations, and 215 different types of projects and a wide choice within these placements, we are now the world's leading overseas volunteering and gap-year organisation.

We also have recruitment staff working around the world, including offices all over Europe and further afield, from Tokyo to Toronto and from Adelaide to New York.

Projects Abroad volunteers are aged from 16 to 75! Gap year volunteers and recent graduates still make up our largest numbers, but increasing numbers of volunteers join us in the summer holidays before starting university or while still in the 6th form at school or college. Many career breakers join us to take some time out volunteering and increasingly retired people also choose to spend some time on our projects.