The gap-year concept has been around for many years and allows opportunities to gain experience and do worthwhile work. Janet Stafford reports

There were grumbles about the much-hyped film adaptation, although Leo di Caprio looked quite cute, but Alex Garland's novel The Beach made travelling really cool.

Slinging on a backpack and heading to far off places is fast becoming an important rite of passage for Irish and British students. Ask students what they're going to do when they leave college and many now reply, "Take a year out and go travelling." You may think that you wouldn't mind doing that sometime in the future, but what about considering taking a year out this year after your Leaving Cert? And how about gaining some valuable life experiences while volunteering to help others?

In Britain the concept of taking a "gap" year before going to third level has been around for a relatively long time - in fact one of the approved Year Out organisations in Britain was founded as long ago as 1932 by a doctor who accompanied Captain Scott on his 1910 Antarctic expedition.

The idea behind a gap year or year out before college is for students to travel, gain life experiences and get involved in some volunteer work that benefits the communities they're working in. By structuring a year out through an organisation, students are living and working independently in far-flung destinations, but also have the organised back-up of staff who have years of experience and contacts in the various countries.

If you visited The Irish Times/Institute of Guidance Counsellors Higher Options conference last September, you may have visited the stand run by the Year Out Organisation. Year Out is the umbrella under which approved organisations coordinate activities for students taking time out before college. Various organisations have participated in Higher Options in recent years. For instance Teaching and Projects Abroad, which gives you the opportunity to teach, be involved in pre-university medical or veterinary projects or community care work for example, in countries such as Ghana, Nepal or Romania.

Another former visitor to Higher Options was Coral Cay Conservation (CCC). This is the International Year of Ecotourism so you may consider it an apt time for a placement with CCC.

This organisation is involved in rain forest and coral reef conservation projects in places like the Bay Islands of Honduras or in the Philippines. You may already have an interest in conservation or scuba diving, but these projects give you the chance to increase your knowledge immeasurably.

GAP Activity Projects, a non-profit organisation, celebrates it's 30th birthday this year. It has looked after over 17,000 students going on projects in that time and now it is concentrating on their operation in Ireland. Last year it supported 11 Irish students going on projects to places ranging from the US to Vietnam and so far this year it has 11 more hoping to head off adventuring.

Many university presidents and admissions officers praise a gap year as benefiting students by helping them to approach university with a more mature and open-minded outlook.

Part and parcel of the learning experience is that students have to fund-raise and work to help finance their trip.

If you check the message boards of the various Year Out organisations, you can see how much effort is going into raising money and how much fun and sense of achievement the students derive from it.

Typically, in a 15-month "year" out, students will work and fund-raise at home for six months, work abroad for six months and travel with friends they make on their placement for up to three months.

All that is left to do after that is to start your third-level course, bore all your college friends senseless with endless stories of your adventures - but secretly know inside that they are all madly jealous that they didn't grab the same chance as you did.

You can find out more about approved Year Out organisations at www.yearoutgroup.org