Do a Gap Year - Become an au pair!

Au pairing is a cool, cheap, flexible and well-proven way to organise a Gap Year. And what's a Gap Year? Find out all about it here!

 

What's a Gap Year?

"Gap year" is a term used to describe what happens when a young person decides to take time off from school or university and pursue other experiences, adventures and learning opportunities. The "gap" is between one segment of traditional education and the next. 

But the idea is not just to take time off and go on a long vacation. Much more it is to broaden one's experience by doing something that lets one learn in new, different and exciting ways. The basic Gap Year inspiration is to use one's youth and flexibility to gain experience of something other than just the inside of a classroom. 

Gap year benefits

More and more young people are discovering that this approach can deliver a stunning mix of benefits: 

  • Learning a new language
  • Finding out about the world
  • Becoming more confident and independent
  • Discovering one's true interests

Benefits like these are powering a steady expansion of the Gap Year approach to learning. Many education institutions actively encourage their students to take time off and gain other types of experience. President Obama's daughter (as one high profile example) has taken a Gap Year after finishing high school and before continuing her studies at Harvard University.

Au pairing: The Gap Year that pays for itself

Today, there are Gap Year programmes that provide elaborate and often quite exotic experiences for young people. These can come with price tags of more than 10,000 EUR for just a few months in a foreign country. 

The au pair option on the other hand is basically self-financing. As air fares have gone down and Internet platforms such as AuPairWorld have given young people an effective way to contact host families without having to pay expensive agency fees, young people can set off on a Gap Year and finance the adventure out of their own pocket.

At the same time, these adventurous young people are getting the benefits that are making Gap Years more and more popular throughout the world. They're finding out that the world has a lot to teach them and that they can learn many of the best lessons on their own!

Interested in doing a Gap Year as an au pair?

Read all the information on au pairing, learn how the process works and find your perfect host family with us!

Become an au pair now