About

Quest Overseas has been in operation since 1996, providing teams of gap year students with the opportunity to work on a worthwhile and sustainable volunteer project and take part in an challenging and adventurous expedition in either Africa or South America. We are not a large organisation, and work with only a small number of projects in each continent specifically to ensure that we maintain close relationships and that we can monitor carefully the impact of all work done by our volunteers.

The projects form the heart of what we do and we commit in the long-term to each one. Working alongside local partners, each team undertakes a volunteer project that is part of an established development plan, put together by our project partners and the communities in which they work. In this way we make sure the projects undertaken will benefit from a short-term team of volunteers and that the work being done is useful to the project itself. In addition to the provision of volunteers, we support each of our projects financially throughout the year. This is both in the form of donations made by our volunteers, and through our UK registered charity, Quest4Change. We have been supporting our longest running project, in the shanty town of Villa Maria, in Lima, Peru, since 1998 and since then we have raised over £1.5million for all our projects as a whole.

Alongside the completion of the volunteer project, the cultural exchange and the understanding they gain of other areas of the world, the team environment of the projects and expeditions (led by one or two of our experienced leaders), allows students to develop key communication, team-work and leaderships skills and to grow in maturity and independence ready for their later university studies.

Quest Overseas has also be externally assessed by the Young Explorer’s Trust as compliant with British Standard BSI8848, a rigorous assessment of safe operational practices within the youth expedition industry.