Had the best time, met amazing people and the in-country and pre departure support was very efficient and helpful!
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Once in a lifetime experience. Loved every second.
Hi :) I did the 6-week Real South America Encounter with Plan My Gap Year, and overall had an amazing experience! PMGY made traveling and volunteering across 3 countries really easy! They did the majority of the pre-departure planning incl. organizing my accommodation, matching me to a volunteer project in my chosen field, as well as helped with transportation between the 3 countries. If you are new to traveling, don't know where to start, or simply want some help planning a longer, unforgetable volunteering experience abroad, PMGY is the way to go ;)
Amazing! Great pre-departure help and support, brilliant range of volunteering choices, wide range of activities (during week and weekends)! Thanks!
Everything was well planned and amazing experience. Would recommand
The PMGY South America Encounter gives you the opportunity to explore three incredible countries with diverse cultures. During my trip I made new friends, planned weekend trips to beautiful locations and gained new skills from my volunteer projects.
This program was a great introduction to traveling throughout Central and South America! It has inspired me to continue my travels and given me the confidence and knowledge on how to travel on my own as well. I think there could be more information provided about the living situations, especially in Ecuador I was not quite sure what to expect and was left wishing some things had been done differently regarding food and accommodation. All in all, I had an amazing time in every country and am thankful for all the support I received.
I really enjoyed my trip and visiting the three different locations. I wish that I would have had more information about the volunteer tweeting beforehand in terms of the location and how to get there. Overall a great experience!
I had an amazing time and experienced different cultures.
Its amazing what each of these countries has to offer. Thanks to PMGY and this program i got to contribute and have fun in the process.
I had an amazing time and met so many great people. I also was able to greatly improve my Spanish.
A life changing experience! The experience for 6 weeks is one which I will never forget. There is not a day that goes by which I don't think about my time and I would recommend this trip to anyone. I chose the travel programme through 3 countries: Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru. In each country I participated in a childcare programme. The volunteering takes place in the morning, in the afternoon and on weekends you can do activities (rafting, zippling, hiking ... ) and visit the country. I made a real connection with the children and learned a lot. I met some great people and made life-long friends. I lived with local families were also amazing as they were so hospitable and friendly. It was an unforgettable experience that I cannot recommend any more to any body considering it, do it, you won't regret it!
Amazing experience spent with amazing people in an amazing place.
Excellent travel organisation, very well organised trips and very helpful team
An amazing experience which allowed me to meet loads of new people giving me enough free time to travel around the country's whilst still working on a volunteer project.
Reliable and great quality
For my gap year I had decided that I wanted to travel to a few countries in South America for at least three months to volunteer and work on my spanish. Despite not finding any reviews for this particular trip with PMGY, I chose to go with them. This was an excellent decision and I truly don't think I could've chosen a better organisation. PMGY's support pre-departure was good, with the online webinars being a comfort and the information about the countries ensuring me (and my parents) that it was an organised and well run organisation. Although I didn’t have much contact with the organisation whilst abroad, I felt they were there if necessary, and this was proven the case several times when my friends contacted them. In Latin America we worked with PMGY's local organisations which were all wonderful, although they differed in their levels of support. Despite this, I always felt support was at hand and never hesitated to talk to the local organisations if there was an issue. The three countries I went to, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru are truly unique and incredible countries. I think one would have to search far and wide to find a better combination of countries in Latin America for volunteer work (and travel). I felt completely safe in all three countries and walked freely around on my own, and felt at ease walking on my own from the accommodation to the projects (Between 10 to 25 min walks, varying from country to country). For my volunteer work, I worked in a kindergarten in Costa Rica and worked as an English teacher in Ecuador and Peru. I was already quite confident with my spanish (about B1 on the CEFR scale) which definitely made my volunteer work easier and less draining. My spanish level also greatly improved largely due to my work with teenagers in Ecuador and Peru, travelling and meeting both locals and hispanics. I really enjoyed working in the kindergarten in Costa Rica (a state run kindergarten with mostly children from low income families) and highly recommended the childcare project there. I only worked about 4.5 - 5 hours a day but the work was intense, and espanish speaking toddlers are not the easiest to understand, at least initially when you're getting the hang of the language. Being able to relax for a few hours after work was wonderful and as the accommodation in Costa Rica was incredible (lush garden and very modern open houses at the spanish school which is the local organisation) and a good time to reflect, before often going to the weekday activities (visit to a volcano, San jose, Coffee bean plantation, chocolate plantation, cloud forest, cooking classes and much more). In Ecuador I also greatly enjoyed my volunteer experience, although I worked quite a bit more, about 6 - 6.5 hours a day. This experience was very different as I worked at Colegio Frederico Gauss with 12 to 18 year olds (many older as well, I believe the oldest was 21, 19 and 20 y/o was very common). The teacher I worked was wonderful and encouraged me to teach the class while she sat and graded or occasionally had to go to a meeting. She helped me improve my skills as a teacher and gave me the opportunity to teach independently. The rest of the teachers were very welcoming and curious. Working in Peru was slightly different as I worked from 1 pm to 5:30 pm (6pm in Peruvian summer), whereas in the other countries I started at 0730 and 0750, respectively. Although at first I wasn't sure about this, it enabled me to explore Cusco in the mornings, and one week have spanish lessons. The teaching experience there was quite different from Ecuador as the english level was significantly lower, with most of the work being teaching Personal pronouns, present tense, to be and the continuous instead of more advanced work like the conditional tense in Ecuador. The teachers often had meeting which meant I was occasionally left alone with the 25-30 students with not much instruction about what to do. Although a bit daunting initially I believe it was a good experience and the last few times before I left the teacher I worked with gave me lesson plans to work with. A little tip, for this project it’s expected you bring your own board markers, buying them will make you feel more independent and will greatly help. Also another tip, for Ecuador bring a passport photo! (you get a volunteer ID which gives you discounts in Ecuador, often as an Ecuadorian student). It was possible to ask for days off the project if you wanted to travel somewhere far away, in Ecuador special arrangements are in place for days off if one wants to go to the Galapagos Islands or the Amazon. In Costa Rica I worked from monday to thursday which made going away at the weekends very easy. However I would recommend maybe staying an extra week to do a bit of travelling at the end of your trip. All in all, volunteering was only one part of the wonderful experience. Living, travelling and being with wonderful people, both from PMGY, other organisations, and Spanish language students enriched the experience. Although it may sound cliché I have truly met people that have changed the way I think and act. Simultaneously both with and without those people, I have had experiences, volunteering, travelling and so much more which gave me a new outlook on the world, people and myself. If you want to experience three beautiful countries in Latin America, with mountains, volcanoes, beaches, waves, wildlife, Inca ruins, cloud forests, rain forests, animals and plants you never imagined existed, travellers and locals with open hearts and good stories while at the same time getting to know the locals and the local culture through interacting with them everyday due to volunteering this is the trip for you. PMGY ensure there is always both international and local support available but at the same time the trip feels and is very much independent. Although in Ecuador and Peru the local organisations could and did organise weekend trips, and all three countries would help you if you wanted my friends and I generally organised them ourselves, occasionally with input from the organisations travel coordinators or secretaries. I highly recommend both PMGY and the real south America encounter and hope many more people choose to do this trip as it is not only worth every penny and time spent but I believe it will enrich your life and will be the experience of a lifetime :)
The induvidual spanish programs I were at were varying levels of good but PMGY really had very little involvement other than the pickup arrangements and booking the spanish school. I wasn't with any other PGMY people which was fine but I had no idea going in. It might have been a bit cheaper to book with induvidual spanish schools but all in all the experience was a good one and the PGMY program was definitely very easy.