Visions Service Adventures
Since 1989 VISIONS has set the standard for international community service programs for high school students.
VISIONS summer programs for teenagers blend ambitious service, cultural immersion, and adventure. Days of close camaraderie within another culture have a rhythm and substance that push you to tap into your potential as you and your peers work toward common goals.
You will know the people whose lives you have impacted, and will return home a more confident global citizen with genuine appreciation for our multi-cultural world.
Service Work
VISIONS projects are ambitious. We work hard to meet service commitments that we plan with host communities in response to needs that they identify. The service encompasses both construction and non-construction.
We spend at least 55% of the program engaging in service. We partner with local governments, NGO's, civic sectors, and community-minded individuals. In some locations, our partners plan projects in stages, several progressive seasons ahead, confident in VISIONS high standards and our participants' proven capabilities.
Culture & Language Immersion
Cultural understanding and friendship is a core focus. Working with and for our hosts is a doorway into their lives. You will learn about the place you go in many ways. Spanish- and French-speaking programs, with fluent staff leaders, offer constant language immersion that increases foreign language speaking skills.
We share work sites, meals and down time with folks who have become close friends over the course of many summers. Always there are opportunities to meet and mingle with local people. Our programs have the means, methods and opportunities for a variety of dialogues with native speakers.
Adventure & Exploration
Our goal is to provide a balanced experience overall. There is time to play and wind down throughout the program. VISIONS program sites offer a splendid variety of scenery, geography, wildlife and history. We explore the places we go in ways that are challenging, engaging and purely fun.
Depending on the location, recreation activities include rock or ice climbing, wilderness backpacking and hiking, snorkeling, scuba diving, sea kayaking, rainforest zip-lining, rafting, horseback riding, whale watching, underground cave exploration and more.
I have never had so much fun with such amazing individuals completing projects that would and will benefit so many people in my entire life.
Patrick Fleming
Alaska '08
I still call on my experience with VISIONS and am gratified to have that knowledge informing my work. This is no luxury tour - just luxurious learning and growth. VISIONS has its head and heart in the right place and really is different, in all the right ways, from many organizations that offer summer service programs for teenagers.
Max Savishinsky, Program Director
Exploration Seminars, University of Washington