STUDY ABROAD
Studying Abroad with IOI
Study abroad is a key and central part of what we do at IOI. Whether your time with IOI is part of a semester long course or a short term faculty led trip, IOI will give you and the students the opportunity to develop key professional and personal skills. Our programs are custom designed to fit every university’s needs while also emphasizing cultural exchange, service learning, and language immersion.
Are you ready to help your students gain field experience and academic knowledge in some of the most isolated ecosystems in the Americas?
The full service study abroad and service opportunities we provide are built around the two central pillars of cultural immersion of host family living and IOI’s continuous sustainable development programs.
While studying abroad with IOI, students will gain experience that stretches beyond the normal educational scope past academia and past the breadth of volunteer work, into the realm of life-long learning. While studying abroad at one of our sites, students will live with local host families, or in locally run B&Bs.
The local host families also benefit from the cultural and linguistic exchange through shared experiences, through cultural and knowledge exchange, and by receiving a full additional household income for hosting our participants.
Why Choose IOI?
CARBON NEUTRAL
Join the 1st study abroad organization offering Carbon Neutral international education opportunities. Your trip’s CO2 emissions will be calculated and we will jointly mitigate 100% of them
CUSTOMIZABLE PROGRAMS
Our programs can be 100% custom designed to every university and educator’s needs
GLOBAL COMPETENCE SKILLS
Add the AFS Global Competency Certificate to help your students develop intercultural competence and better deal with cultural adjustment.
VARIETY OF STUDY/RESEARCH FOCUSES
From environmental journalism, to rural community economics, or marine science and ecology, we have a variety of projects and expertise where your study abroad courses can anchor to.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
With experienced and highly trained staff, the safety of your students is our top priority. We combine local knowledge with global support and protocols.
SPANISH
With an estimated 470 million people speaking native Spanish, this is a very useful language to know. We can add Spanish classes before or during the program so your students gain basic Spanish skills.
UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
All our course and program objectives as well as our field work are aligned with IOI’s mid and long term objectives, designed as part of the UN SDG framework
INDEPENDENT PROJECTS
Offer your students the opportunity to run and execute an independent study project as part of their course. We will ensure these projects help contribute towards IOI’s mid and long term objectives and the UN SDGs
CULTURAL IMMERSION
The study abroad and service opportunities we provide are built around cultural immersion by having students live with our host families or in locally run B&B’s while working with local entities like the National Parks.
ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS
Become the research anchor for some of our locally-led projects. We will then support your research with year-round data collection. What a better way to gain long term data in remote locations?
SKILL DEVELOPMENT
Our courses are designed to help develop valuable life and professional skills, such as global awareness & intelligence, field experience, teamwork, and Spanish language.
Areas of Study
Our aim is to co-design affordable, safe, fun, and impactful trips so students get extraordinary academic experiences and gain highly valuable global competence and other key employability skills. The design of our service programs is based in and around science by merging international education, research, and local projects. Thus, our service projects are academically informed by research, financed and participated in by international education, and executed throughout the year by our volunteers, local authorities, and community members.
All our programs and courses are co-designed with university faculty to ensure educational objectives are met whilst contributing to IOI’s long term conservation and development goals, and the global UN SDGs.
Students will get deep insights into IOI’s sustainable development work in conservation, education, and social development. This includes projects from terrestrial/marine conservation and ecology to sustainable tourism, from environmental journalism to geology to sound engineering.
Service learning activities are customized to the curriculum and can include: invasive species management, turtle nesting monitoring, coastal and watershed management analysis, trail and park maintenance, sustainable agriculture and environmental restoration. All service learning projects are designed to add to our ongoing conservation programs and generate lasting, high impact in a short period of time.
Global Impact
IOl is fully committed to helping achieve the SDGs. In collaboration with local, regional, and global partners, IOI’s work directly advances the implementation of these goals. IOI designs all of its projects and organizational objectives to align with the SDG framework.
Specifically, our work and the international education trips substantially contributes to the achievement of the following goals:
The implementation of the SDGs ensures a human-environmental balance and economic prosperity for today while ensuring the same benefits for all future generations. IOI aims to engage, educate, and help create global citizens who are inspired to be part of the solution and who continue to contribute towards a sustainable world.
Responsible Education Abroad Compliance
IOI has aligned all it’s programs and operations with the “Responsible Education Abroad: Best Practices for Health, Safety, and Security” guidance provided by the joint task force convened by The Forum on Education Abroad and NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
These guidelines outline fundamental expectations for health, safety, and security in education abroad and reflect changes and advances in education abroad management; a recognition of an expanded view of education abroad to include study, internships, service learning, and research abroad; and an appreciation of how issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion affect health, safety, and security.
So, adventure awaits. Are you ready to go?
If you are a student interested in studying with us, please contact us here.
If you are a university administrator or faculty member, and are interested in setting up a study abroad trip or conducting research in the Galapagos or Cuba please send us an e-mail at info@ioi.ngo.
Download our study abroad brochure
