About Lattitude Global Volunteering
Lattitude is a charity specialising in international volunteering for 17 - 25 year olds. Our mission is to provide a distinctive and international volunteering experience for all young people. We do this through a journey of discovery that fosters independence, helps others and promotes global understanding.
Lattitude aims to provide a unique learning experience for young people and to enable them to contribute to overseas communities. Every year we place around 2000 UK and overseas volunteers in 26 different countries around the world.
In a fast changing and challenging world we believe it is vital to increase global awareness. We believe that through volunteering and service to communities, our volunteers can help achieve this. We know that by working and living together greater mutual understanding is achieved.
Simply put, our aims are:
To enable young people to experience the benefits of international volunteering
To provide placements which allow young people to develop their skills and broaden their education
To promote access to Lattitude volunteering opportunities to all young people, regardless of background
To help overseas communities by providing volunteer support
Supporting Lattitude helps us to :
Provide life changing opportunities for young people - our volunteers learn about themselves, about other people and about different cultures. Volunteers develop a wide range of life skills.
Provide opportunities for all. We are committed to providing placements to all young people. We are being pro-active to encourage new audiences to apply to Lattitude and we fundraise for a Bursary Scheme so that financial barriers to participation are reduced.
Provide volunteers where they are most needed. We send volunteers to placements where they can make a difference in the time that they are there. We are committed to expanding the number of placements we have in developing countries.
Bring volunteers into the UK. We also place volunteers from overseas in the UK offering as much international exchange as we can.
Donations help us to keep the costs of our placements as low as possible, helping to ensure as many young people as possible can afford to participate and benefit from this unique experience.
Our history
Lattitude Global Volunteering (formerly Gap Activity Projects) has over thirty five years of experience of sending young people to volunteer overseas . We have been placing volunteers since 1972 and over 30,000 young people from around the worlds have volunteered with us. Today we operate in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Australasia - sending 2,000 young people a year to volunteer in teaching, caring, environmental, outdoor activity, medical and community development projects.
Lattitude has always subsidised its volunteers, and works hard to keep costs to volunteers as low as possible. Lattitude subsidises the cost of every placement by 20% through its fundraising programme and in 1998 introduced a Bursary Scheme to help those volunteers who, because of their financial circumstances, would not otherwise be able to volunteer overseas.