Associação Gap Year Portugal

Gap Year Portugal is the Portuguese NGO that promotes the concept of gap year in Portugal and that helps everyone who wants to do it. We believe not everyone needs to follow the same path. People should have the opportunity to take a break from their routine, take full control of their lives and take time to realize what they’re passionate about. This is the time to explore and experience, to get out of their comfort zone, to learn more about themselves and about the world, to gain life experience and improve their soft and hard skills. As a national youth NGO, we want to help develop what we like to call a “generation plus”: a generation that’s more active, more capable, more human, more autonomous and more conscious about their future. Therefore, our target group is young people, between 16 and 30 years old, living in Portugal. In terms of activities, we focus on the two areas mentioned above: awareness and support. Regarding awareness, we do both online activities (talks, workshops and information sessions), as well as offline activities (own events, attendance at events and a large project in secondary schools). Regarding support, we have a mentoring program that consists on an individual and personalized support, given by a mentor - who has already done a gap year -, with the aim to help future gappers (people who will do a gap year) in all the phases (planning and action). We are a nonprofit organization and, until this date, our services are all free of charge.