Education Project in Bali
Join a team, live together in a Balinese community and immerse yourself in a project, aimed at increasing local opportunity.
English is a real commodity in Bali and the tourism industry alone is responsible for over 20% of all jobs. Being able to speak English confidently and proficiently opens the door to new careers and sustainable income. The main focus of this project is to assist young people to increase their career prospects by improving their English conversational ability.
Each day you will work in small groups to support and supplement English language learning. We do this through non-formal techniques and interactive sessions, using games and creative activities to establish fun learning environments. In addition and at the request of local communities, we provide small group adult conversational English lessons.
Developed by educational professionals from local schools, youth projects and kindergartens, this project facilitates international development by empowering local Balinese communities through capacity building and language skills, connecting our local partners with global opportunities. The project fosters cross-cultural collaboration and the sharing of ideas, cultures and perspectives and also brings useful financial resources and economic benefit to areas outside the direct tourist hubs.
Aside from the project aims, you will have the chance to immerse yourself in the fascinating and vibrant Balinese culture and to spend your weekends exploring Bali’s breathtaking sights and scenery.
- Contribute to language learning & youth development
- 1-month Education Project in Bali, Indonesia
- Work within a range of local kindergartens, schools and communities.
- Collaborate with local teaching and education professionals at grass roots projects
- Experience traditional Balinese life in a host community.
- Develop soft skills, cultural intelligence and leadership skills to boost your employability.
- Includes; pre arrival support, 24/7 in-country support, team building camp, accommodation, breakfast & dinners, food, domestic travel, training and workshops, plus cultural experiences and tours. (Flights not included)
- Fees: £1,895 / $3,545 AUD for 1-month in Bali.
- University scholarships available. Download Our Funding Guide
Project Discovery Session 
Monday’s 5pm [GMT – London] / 12pm [EST – New York] (Register Here) or Monday’s 12pm [AEST – Brisbane] (Register Here)
Projects in Bali 
: Biweekly on a Wednesday’s 4pm [GMT] / [11am EST] (Register Here)
On a Think Pacific Education Project in Bali, this is your opportunity to:
- Experience; Support conversational English lessons and youth activities.
- Challenge; Expand your comfort zone by immersing and working in a new culture.
- Purpose: Join a project that helps young people boost their opportunities.
- Sustainable: Provide supplementary support to sustainable local projects.
- Learn; Learn from inspiring grass-roots partners.
- Skills; Grow your ‘soft skills’ such as teamwork, communication, emotional intelligence & leadership.
Who is this project for? We require participants who are over 18 and have English as their first language (or advanced level). Prior experience of working with children (e.g through clubs, volunteering, tutoring or coaching) is huge benefit. Training is provided, alongside mentorship during the programme. All participants must provide a police clearance (CRB) as standard.
Each day you will work within a variety of local projects to support Balinese teachers and youth workers. The role is varied and you will work in small groups to plan, prepare and support sessions. Activities include supporting English language within early years education settings, supporting English language learning in elementary schools and getting creative to lead after-school youth clubs for children aged 5-18. We also assist by running informal English lessons for teachers and adult community members who have requested assistance. The days are busy and fun-filled as we supplement existing local initiatives and work with educational professionals to expand opportunities through language learning.
Work within local schools and kindergartens to provide 1-1 and small group support, with a focus upon developing conversational English.
Lead after-school youth clubs in art, drama, music, games and sports and use engaging ways to teach English through non-formal education
Provide fun Conversational English classes to improve employment prospects for youth and adult community members.
Think Pacific supports a number of elementary schools based within walking distance or a short commute from your homestay base in Bali. The aim of the school projects is to provide regular assistance with conversational English support under the direction of qualified local teachers. The project also supports after-school youth clubs, which enable children to learn English in an interactive and engaging way. Each school has between 100 and 300 students, grade 1-6.
The schools have also requested English lessons and tuition for the teachers (adult literacy) with the aim of improving English conversation, reading and writing skills of the teaching staff.
We also support a number of after school clubs and locally run youth projects for 5-18 years old, located approximately 30 minutes drive from the community. Transport is provided via private, air conditioned vehicles, taking you to and from each project.
We also support early education programmes for children aged 3-5 years old. The project embeds conversational English at an early age to develop lifelong language skills. The project has a focus to teach children outside the classroom and use engaging and creative activities for learning.
You will be support to teachers within local elementary schools, acting as assistant teachers and delivering small group and 1-1 tuition for children. English lessons take place each day and you will work with different age groups to support the teacher or lead your own small groups, under their supervision, with a focus upon Conversational English as well as supporting English reading and writing.
Each day you will need to plan fun and interactive sessions, where you can follow on from classes led by the teacher and support sessions already held by previous volunteers. We encourage using learning through play, educational games and creative activities to make your lessons fun, interesting and interactive.
The cross-cultural collaboration provides uniqueness and novelty to local teaching, including considering accents, dialect, regional differences and even slang terms, which can all be important for conversational proficiency within tourism.
The aim of our after school clubs is to further the development of English through a range of activities including art, drama, singing, dance, team games, crafts, music, or sports. Through this, we expand both the English skills and the wider personal and social skills of young people fostering team work, initiative, creativity, decision making, leadership, reflection and non-verbal communication,
These clubs offer the chance to bring your own passions. Under the guidance of local Balinese staff you can suggest ideas for your favourite sport or activities so we can develop and grow the programme and widen the scope and theme.
Each day you will have time to plan and prepare your English lesson and activities. The homestay provides a beautiful, quiet and comfortable space to work on your planning. There is also a selection of wonderful cafes and restaurants within easy walking distance with wifi access. Our staff team provide resources and materials and example lesson plans for you to use as a team as you share your ideas and experience and upload your resources to our database so future groups can build upon your work.
Our conversational English lessons have been created for and at the request of local community members, including Balinese teaching staff. They are a fun, impactful and innovative way for you to directly support the host communities.
With the vast majority of jobs in Bali connected to the growing tourism industry, being proficient in conversational English can be a vital tool to advance job opportunities for local people and a driver for better income.
Working with our Balinese staff team, you will have the opportunity to design, plan and deliver small lessons, 1-1 and group English tuition at the most convenient times for local people (usually early morning or early evening).
The project is busy and varied and volunteers will work in smaller groups and visit different projects and rotate from Monday-Friday. Here is an example average day.
7am = Wake up & Time for Breakfast. Breakfast is served in your homestay accommodation, together with your fellow volunteers.
8-8.30am = Travel to your project. Some schools and projects are based a short walk away, others are up to 30 mins drive. You will travel to your project with a small group of fellow volunteers, supported by our Project Coordinators.
9am = In the mornings volunteers are assigned to one of the following projects on a rota basis and work within local school settings
- 1) Kindergarten support
- 2) Primary school support
- 3) English lessons for Teaching staff
- 4) Conversational English lessons in the community.
Midday = Lunch & Yoga
1pm – 2pm = Lesson & Activity Planning in groups
2pm – 5pm = Travel to after school clubs to lead grass roots youth projects, and ‘English Language Through Activity’ , developing conversational English through art, drama, music, crafts and games.
5.30pm = Return to the village and debrief
7pm = Dinner & Free time
During the project, all students stay within the same beautiful and traditional Balinese village, which is located in a very safe area, located a short distance from the cultural and wellness hub of Ubud. Living in homestay is a wonderful experience and your chance to learn about traditions and customs.
The accommodations are all clean and modern, with western style bathrooms. Rooms have air conditioning, electricity and wifi. Most rooms are twin share and you will share with a fellow student on the programme of the same gender. You will have a lock and key to your room for privacy.
Breakfast and evening meals are served Monday – Friday at your homestay. Food is wholesome and local, often a mix of bread, jam, fruit, fresh juice, tea and coffee in the morning and dinners are rice, noodles, vegetables with optional meat or seafood. Balinese food can be spicy but we ensure there are varied options. Vegetarians and vegans can be catered for. Tea, coffee and filtered water is available at all homestay throughout the day and you should never drink tap water.
Become part of a a traditional balinese community and immerse yourself in the wonderful culture and traditions.
Project designed with a careful local process of needs assessment, local design, resource distribution, monitoring and evaluation to create ethical and sustainable aims.
Your project starts with a briefing where our staff provide comprehensive training and preperation for your project.
Learn about Balinese culture and bond as a group with a fun, adventurous and immersive team building experience at a Balinese jungle retreat.
Our team are on hand to guide and support you, living within the community and overseeing daily activities.
Spend your weekends exploring more of Bali’s incredible scenery and the activities the island is famous for, including yoga, meditation, hiking, snorkelling and surfing.
This programme has been developed through considered consultation with local teachers and community leaders to provide supplementary support based on their requests and ideas. We support existing quality programmes, whilst fostering inter-cultural communication and creating a model of sustainable resource distribution to local communities.
The long-term aim of the programme is to empower young people to increase their career opportunities through the development of conversational English, which puts them at an advantage in the local and international job market.
Think Pacific adds support to existing local projects and initiatives, which are established via formal mechanisms of needs assessment and structured monitoring and evaluation. Each project adds new lesson plans and activities to increase local teaching resources for the future, as well as new ideas, innovation and creativity, which builds upon the previous project to widen impact, opportunity and local benefit.
Support is supplementary to ensure the activities and initiatives are not dependent on international ‘help’, but instead, that international collaboration is a valued, unique and novel addition to benefit locally led initiatives.
Crucial to the programme is our financial model. We use every programme as a means of ethical resource generation and local distribution, investing the funding of project fees directly into local training, local employment, the local economy, the purchase of educational materials for schools and centres and the funding of local scholarships for youth.
1-Month Dates
🇮🇩🌴
4th August- 31 Aug 2024
16th Sep – 13th Oct 2024
14th Oct – 10th Nov 2024
18th Nov – 15th Dec 2024
13th Jan – 9th Feb 2025
10th Feb – 9th Mar 2025
17th Mar – 13th Apr 2025
14th Apr – 11th May 2025
2-Month Dates🇮🇩🌴
16th Sep – 10th Nov 2024
13th Jan – 9th Mar 2025
17th Mar – 11th May 2025
This secures your place in the team and provides personal support from your project coordinator, access to our pre-departure portal, online preparation webinars and your Think Pacific t-shirt. Your registration fee is added to your project fees.
This covers the remaining costs of the placement. Many students receive bursaries from their universities to support their participation and/or fundraise for their program fees. It’s up to you whether you fundraise or not but your project fee is due 60 days before the project begins.
We pride ourselves on the delivery of a safe, structured and personally supported experience. Our philosophy is to provide a high-quality and exceptionally well-structured international project that gives you a once-in-a-lifetime experience, whilst contributing to sustainable development.
| Currency | £GBP | $AUD |
| Registration Fee | 195 | 345 |
| 1-Month Project Fee | 1700 | 3300 |
| 2 Month Project Fee | 2400 | 4650 |
Think Pacific works in partnership with many universities across the world to support student mobility and employability. There are scholarships and grants available for students from individual university departments and/or governments in several countries.
Students can apply for scholarships and bursaries to join our projects in Fiji. To find out if there’s funding available at your university or in your areas, please email info@thinkpacific.com.
Full inclusions list:
- Airport welcome by Think Pacific team leaders
- All accommodation including 2- day jungle briefing and cultural orientation, 2-day team building camp in a beautiful rural setting, homestay accommodation in traditional Balinese village and 2 days debrief at a hotel. (However, you can choose to travel with your teammates at the weekend to experience other areas of Bali)
- All in-country travel, except for optional weekends travel.
- Breakfast and evening meal from Monday – Friday across your 4-week project (lunches not provided)
- Guided activities, such as local hikes, excursions to sites of interest or attending local festivals or community events.
- Think Pacific leaders living alongside the group 24/7.
- In-country manager, Balinese-based Project Managers and UK team providing planning, risk assessment and 24-hour backup support.
- Outstanding pastoral support.
- Air-conditioned private transfers to your placements each day.
- Comprehensive online portal & personal volunteer project planning resources.
The following costs are not inclusive of the programme fee. However, Think Pacific provides comprehensive and personalised support to assist:
- Flights – Budget approximately £800 – £1,000
- Insurance – Budget approximately £100- £150 Think Pacific can advise and provide details for recommended policy
- Visa – Cost approx £200 – Think Pacific manages the process and advises students on their visa.
- Equipment – Budget approximately £100 Comprehensive kit list and pre-departure advice provided, including specific items of clothing, footwear and first aid resources
- Vaccinations – Budget approximately £50 (However, vaccines are free from the NHS for most students). Vaccinations include Typhoid and Hepatitis A.
- Spending Money – Budget approximately £550. For small items of personal nature, meals not included in the itinerary or additional activities.
Apply for university funding to cover flights, insurance and visa.
Think Pacific team mentors guide the whole project and are available 24/7 for student support. Our biggest piece of advice for students is to not hesitate to speak to our team leaders if they have any questions about health and safety.
During orientation, students are given guidelines to ensure they stay safe in Bali. For example, students should always stay in pairs at least and should keep their accommodation address in Sinhalese or Indonesian with them at all times. The guidelines also include important day-to-day advice such as where it is safe to withdraw money from local ATM machines etc.
- Access to the Pre-departure Portal.
This portal provides the step-by-step process to prepare for Bali, including fundraising information, flight information, kit list, visa, cultural preparation. Student can watch videos with our team and download document.
- Contact our team.
You can contact our team anytime between office hours, either give us a call on 0113 335 9919 or email; info@thinkpacific.com.
- Online community/network.
You can communicate with fellow volunteers, alumni and our team through our online community, hosted on the Might Network app. Within 3 months of you departing to Bali, you shall be entered into a private group with your volunteer team.
- Live Pre Departure webinars
Our team host live sessions in the months leading up to your project. These are a great way for you to ask questions and delve deeper into planning for your project. They also add to the excitement!
All projects have been chosen by our team based on the need for international students to complement existing local initiatives. We work with organisations in an effort to bolster the pre-existing resources and provide further support. This ensures programmes do not create a reliance or interrupt long term staffing structures.
Our process for partnership with local organisations is as follows:
- Requested
- Consultation
- Planning
- Logistics
- Resources and Materials
- Delivery
- Review and Feedback
- Sustainability Measures
- Long Term Review
Think Pacific seeks advice from community members, government contacts and Mental Health specialists within Indonesia to ensure that, as an organisation, we plan with the local community needs and considerations at the heart of any projects.
We work to not negatively affect the employment structure and also availability of placements for local students by ensuring that local volunteers are always prioritised by organisations.
The utmost respect is given to local customs & traditions. We wish to inspire with our actions but resist imposing our ideals on others. Students are reminded to treat everyone they meet with the utmost humility and respect.
From an ethical standpoint, it is important that we provide sustainable resources, and support, to our projects in Bali. Whilst students support programmes for a short amount of time, it’s important to note
- The aim of the support is always intended from the outset to be supplementary and not replace local responsibilities. In this way all parties benefit and the local projects can plan strategically to utilise the additional support.
- The programme is long term and in partnership with universities around the globe, which enhances this planning and ensures Think Pacific can guarantee student participants at set times and structure placements many months in advance
- Project feedback is one of the core ways we are able to provide continuity in the sessions provided at all projects. Students record their progress on shared documents allowing them to communicate to present and future students the efficacy of their sessions and pass on important information. This feedback ensures that the service users receive continuity of support and a variety of activities despite the change in personnel.
- We ensure all activity support sessions follow the same structure to provide consistency to the service users and projects.
We rely on consistent feedback from our projects and partners to measure the impact of our work and we release reports to explain the progress of our programs. Think Pacific has grown exponentially due to demand for our initiatives since our first project in 2009 and we continue to supplement local services in the Asia Pacific in collaborative with the needs, wishes and requirements of local stakeholders.
We partner with over 50 universities who see the value of our work and some have even count our placement as part of their students’ course requirements. This often means our programmes are used as credit towards your degree or as part of a formal placement (as required to complete your home degree programme).
Please speak to us and contact nigel@thinkpacific.com if you would like to use your programme as a formal placement or for university credit and we will be happy to discuss with your institution or confirm existing university partnerships we have in place.
Recruiting students who are experienced in the mental health sector helps us to make the best impact in the communities where we work and adds tremendously to the global learning when you are undertaking formal reflections and course work related to the placement.
During this internship, you have the unique opportunity to live in an authentic Balinese village. Often three or more generations live in one family complex, which means students will be surrounded by children, grandmas and grandpas in addition to their parents. You’ll share beautiful, but quite basic accommodation with your host family and fellow teammates.
Breakfast and dinner is also provided at any Think Pacific resorts, camps or hotels. Breakfast and dinner is also included each day in the village and you’ll eat with your Balinese family. You may often find many people when you eat – in Bali, the whole family lives as one. Food is very carbohydrate-heavy, so expect lots of rice and vegetables, as this makes up the bulk of a typical diet.
You’ll have the freedom to purchase your own lunches and meals at weekends – to give you the freedom to try the wonderful array of restaurants, street food and markets available. A lunch in Bali will cost no more than £5.
Life in a rural Balinese village is very different to life in a western city, which brings provides a fascinating experience but also its challenges! The comparatively basic standard of living, the communal nature, the strong religious beliefs and the traditional customs and values in the village, may take time to adjust to. It is completely normal to feel a little out of your depth in the first few days. With the support of your family, your team and our leaders, we find it doesn’t take long to adjust to day-to-day life.
The majority of Balinese adults speak some English. There may be some language barriers with pronunciation, but as long as you talk slowly and clearly in English there is little difficulty in understanding each other. Young children and some elderly members of the community may not speak any English at all and it’s great to learn a few local words as early as you can.
You can choose to stay in your accommodation at the weekend but the homestay village is located outside main tourist areas and away from attractions, which is why volunteers tend to head out on Friday afternoons to spend the weekend soaking up culture and comfort. (This is your choice)
Whether you prefer lazing on a beach or visiting cultural sites, the weekend is your oyster. We would recommend budgeting £50 per weekend for transport, activities, accommodation & all meals. We will provide you with advice on incredible things to do on the weekends.
Think Pacific in-country staff support the programme and guide daily activities.We are incredibly proud that 70% of our paid staff, in Indonesia, are local residents.
By investing in local staff we ensure that we are making as positive an impact as possible within the communities where we work by not only providing long-term employment opportunities but also ensuring that those who know the country and the culture best are managing the project and the relationships with local enterprises. Our international staff provide additional support and mentorship 24/7 and enjoy sharing their lived experience of Bali.
