If you’re new here, you might not realize how much things have changed in the past few months.
Travel Access Project has been a concept in the works for several years.
Over long weekend and campfires, on the beach juggling kids, over continent wide Skype calls, Sean and I have been building the dream and fleshing out the idea of creating magic at the intersection of education and adventure. As passionate travelers who consider the world our very best classroom, we wanted to create a way for people to learn deeply as they explore the world.
Passionate about the concept of independent travel and deeply committed to getting a Gap Year on every resume, we set about thinking hard about how we could give back from the deep well of gratitude for the many gifts the world has given us through travel.
Partnering with Ethan Knight and the Gap Year Association, we began to see that creating something open-source and global in scale could be the perfect synergy between education and adventure in a way that democratized learning and leveled the playing field, making educational Gap Years accessible to more students, of all ages.
Inspired to Travel
It is our hope that the Travel Access Project will whet your whistle for the world and inspire you to get out there and have some adventures. Use it to learn before you travel and discover the world from home, but take it with you and expand your education as you travel, building passion projects around your interests and exploring places within cultures and yourself that you didn’t know existed.
Equipped to Learn
Whether you’re looking for resources for your five year old, or you’re taking your first international trip at fifty, we hope that you’ll find these country pages jam packed with ways to take your learning further.
Read some books, watch some movies, sift through articles, and then consider how to flesh out what sparks your interest with a project or two. Build in some cultural experiences.
- If you’re an independent traveler, dive in and explore at will.
- If you’re a teacher taking kids on a school trip, feel free to pull additional resources and use them with your students, or, send them a link to the page and make assignments from there!
- If you’re a Gap Year program provider, consider these resources your personal repository of educational materials to work into your program and use with your cohort, in advance, or on the ground.
- If you’re a family, feel free to apply what you find to your homeschooling or world schooling efforts.
- If you’re a classroom teacher, then by all means, use what we’ve collected here to inspire and flesh out your geography curriculum at school.
Excited to Contribute
The best thing about open-source resources is the community effort behind them. You’ll see that many of our country resources are developed by volunteers or contributed out of the goodness of someone’s heart. Our hope is that these will not be static pages, but will grow over time, as people become inspired to share their experiences and what they’ve learned with the world.
- Have you been to a country that you’d like to contribute new resources for?
- Is there an existing country page that you could add to?
- Have you used one of the pages and loved it, so now you want to give back?
Send Jenn (at) Bootsnall.com a note and become a contributor!
Eager to Share
If you like what you see here, if you think the country resources are as rich and inspiring as we do, please take a minute and share the ones you like best. Or share a link to the whole site. Or send an email to a friend, student, teacher, or traveler you know who might be able to make use of these free materials, or add to them.
Our Goals
Our goals this year are big!
- We’re adding (at least) one country per week to the Countries Resource Page
- We’re raising money to provide scholarships for Gap Year student travelers (stay tuned!)
- We’re actively looking for partner organizations and individuals
- We’re developing resources to take the Gap Year message to schools across North America and the world
We intend to be a dynamic part of the educational revolution that is well underway and we intend to establish travel as an essential part of every education.
Are you passionate about the intersection of education and adventure?
Join us!