Quest Overseas expands operation

Quest Overseas, one of the UK’s leading gap year companies, is expanding its operation to provide grown up gappers, career breakers and holidaymakers with the same life changing experiences that it has been providing for gap year students since 1996.

There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of people choosing to take ‘grown up gap years’ and sabbaticals, but people are also choosing to be more adventurous in their annual two week break and Quest has expanded its operation to reflect these trends with five new offerings: Quest Overseas, Quest Underseas, Quest Escapes, Quest Sabbaticals and Quest Tailor-made.

Michael Amphlet, Managing Director and founder of Quest, explains:

“Quest expeditions have been designed to ensure that people from all walks of life can get involved in ethical, responsible overseas development travel, without taking months off work or time away from their families. The new options are more flexible and allow everyone to work on Quest projects for a period of time that suits them, whether they are taking a two week holiday or a three month sabbatical. It’s important to highlight that because all Quest expeditions are professionally managed, volunteers spending 3 or 4 days helping on projects still make an important contribution to the communities we work with, often in unexpected ways.”

Quest Overseas was created with strong ethical beliefs at its core and everyone involved with Quest works hard to ensure that each project is run with the same ethical focus. Michael is keen to stress that the company takes its responsibilities to the project communities very seriously.

“Our volunteers contribute directly to the projects they work on, not only with their time and energy but also with their money – on average £750 per person. This amount covers the short and medium term costs of running the projects as well as longer term objectives, from sponsoring a child’s education to protecting six acres of rainforest.

“Quest volunteers see where their money is being spent and appreciate the difference it makes to communities in Africa and South America. Contributing both financially and physically to projects makes them realise just how much they can achieve and how important the work they do is. We are proud of reaching our tenth anniversary, but Quest is dedicated to projects old and new and we welcome volunteers from 18 to 80 to help us continue the valuable work started by Quest Overseas.”