Quest Overseas - Gap Year Travel

Bags are packed, boots are on and Jon's at Heathrow Airport....it can only mean one thing - the first Quest team of 2012 are heading overseas!

Good luck to the Villa Maria Gap Year Team as they head off to Quito, Ecuador to start their action-packed 3 months in South America. The intrepid 12 will be learning Spanish in Quito; providing hundreds of hours of activities for hundreds of children, and constructing new homes for single-parent families at our social project in the shanty town of Villa Maria, Peru, then embarking on a challenging and adventurous expedition through Peru, Chile and Bolivia.

You can follow the team's progress on our "Team Updates" blog - where we will be posting stories and photos from South America as they go along.

Sound like your perfect Gap Year? They why not take a look at the Villa Maria team departing in January 2013!

Our final day in the office until next Wednesday, we just wanted to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2012. Also, here are our office hours for the next week

Friday 23rd December - 9am - 2pm

Monday 26th December - CLOSED

Tuesday 27th December - CLOSED

Wednesday 28th December - 9am - 6pm

Thursday 29th December - 9am - 6pm

Friday 30th December - 9am - 1pm

Monday 2nd January - CLOSED

Tuesday 3rd January - 9am - 6pm

Then we are back to normal.

Have a great break!

Last Sunday night, Quest volunteers past and present dusted off their glad rags and headed to the Annual Reunion Ball at the Artesian Well in Clapham.....

It was a brilliant night, where the volunteers and staff alike got a chance to celebrate their successes and hard work on the projects, immortalised in photos and with prizes for the best shots from the year.  Take a look at the winners:  

And who could forget the first ever Quest music video competition...check out some of the entries here.

As well as the tasty paella, crepes, and some excellent dance moves, we also had happening a fantastic charity casino, from Diamond Fun Casino, caricatures from Mark Reeve, and our charity raffle. The raffle had some generous prizes donated from generous companies, including Orb360,DeltaForce, Rampant Sporting and Lush.  The grand prize of a place on a choice of our summer projects was won by one of our Kenya summer volunteers from this year - congrats Hamish!

Thanks to everyone for making it a great night!

It was great to see so many of you at the ball last Sunday.  We hope that you all had a great night and that the morning after was not too painful.  

Thank you all again for your hard work.

So to start with here is the winning video from The Kenya team.

We will blog a new one each day till Christmas.

Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Quest

Congratulations to Bethany Ecroyd from St Christophers Sixth Form College in Accrington for winning this year's Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Award for Individual Endeavour! This is a quite impressive feat considering there are around 1,500 schools in the UK which take part in the Roots and Shoots programme, and who knows how many students.

In recognition for all the work and effort Bethany has put in over the year, Quest Overseas is delighted to be awarding her with a fully funded place on one of our summer project teams in 2012. She has to decide between working with wild animals in Bolivia, building sand dams in Kenya, putting on stage shows for kids in Peruvian shanty towns, among others.

Read below her letter of recommendation from one of her teachers, I'm sure you'll agree that she is a worthy winner - well done!

Click here to find out more about the Roots and Shoots movement in the UK.