About Projects Abroad

Where it all started

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.

Projects Abroad today

Until 1997, we were a small 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 organised volunteer 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.

Twenty people now work in our office in West Sussex, not far from the university where Peter Slowe used to teach. With over 250 trained staff in our destinations, and offering over 100 generic placements and a wide choice within these placements, we are now the UK’s leading overseas volunteering and gap-year organisation.

Projects Abroad in the global economy

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.

Because we work with local colleagues at all levels, our extensive network of local knowledge enables us to channel the skills of our volunteers to places they are really needed.

Cultural exchange and freedom of choice

Volunteers learn from their chosen placements and from the people they meet and vice versa. Mutual learning and mutual respect is what cultural exchange is all about.

Now we are taking this theme of "respect" further than ever. We are truly global in our outlook. We welcome approaches from potential partners – schools, orphanages, hospitals and so on – from across the developing world; wherever they are or whatever they do, we will try to meet their needs. And we welcome ideas from potential volunteers too; if a volunteer has an idea for a new programme or a new destination, we will do everything we can to enable them to work in their own way. We will cherish their ideas and we will meet their requirements. We believe that flexibility on our part is a necessary consequence of our respect for our partners and our respect for volunteers.

"Last year, we channelled into less developed countries the energy, skills and commitment of some 3,500 volunteers, not to mention over £3,000,000, doubled by the amount that volunteers spend personally while they are abroad. This is a major achievement."
Dr Peter Slowe, Founder and Director of Projects Abroad, Annual Report 2007.

The Projects Abroad Group

Teaching Abroad Ltd, Projects Abroad (UK) Ltd, Projects Abroad (Europe) Ltd and Teaching Abroad Travel Ltd are all members of The Projects Abroad Group and are all companies registered in England.