Rooted Life Adventures is a summer and gap year program provider that offers adventure, personal development, and tangible outcomes through overseas experiences with integrated mental health support. Enrollments are open for the New Zealand Spring 2025 ten-week programs for young adults aged 18-22.
Rooted Life Adventures programs offer an ideal blend of excitement, environmental conservation, cultural immersion, and therapeutic coaching, suitable for the diverse needs of students seeking a meaningful, supported gap year-like experience. All programs offer a psychoeducational curriculum with weekly itineraries that include wellness workshops, which provide mental health and wellness information in a digestible format. Programs also have a therapeutic coach, also known as a Wellness Director, on-site 24/7 to facilitate the curriculum and offer ongoing support to all students and two program instructors.
Students live in Queenstown during the New Zealand Fall program, a tourism hotspot and mountain resort on the South Island. Students undertake adventure activities, explore beautiful landscapes, and learn imperative life skills in a safe and supportive environment. They learn about New Zealand’s Māori culture and visit places of cultural significance. Students participate in volunteer service learning one day a week to learn how to preserve New Zealand’s indigenous flora and fauna and eradicate invasive species. Students also spend one day a week doing hands-on work at an internship on a rural New Zealand private sheep station (ranch) just outside of Queenstown, where they learn practical skills about farming through a varied curriculum.
Students are spoilt for choice regarding activities and adventure excursions; Queenstown has it all. They enjoy canyoning and waterfall rappelling, jetboating through canyons, and hiking in world-famous National Parks, including Aoraki Mount Cook - a training ground for Sir Edmund Hillary's Mount Everest Expedition. Students explore Milford Sound, the world’s “eighth wonder of the world,” by boat cruise, learn to rock climb in Wanaka, go luging in the mountains, and enjoy mesmerizing stargazing experiences. Not only do students learn and grow through these activities, but they also have fun, form strong and authentic friendships, and create lifelong memories.
Students spend one day a week on independent living skills to gain confidence in living independently away from home. They partake in cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, budgeting, cooking, and culinary skills. Together, they learn how to share a home, be good roommates and housemates, and share responsibility for household chores. Rooted Life Adventures focuses on ‘home living,’ differentiating it from other program providers. At the beginning of an RLA program, students provide an overview of their expectations of sharing a house and who they want to be when they show up in relationships with one another. What standards do they have, and how do they hold themselves to them? RLA provides guidance and freedom, and mobility for the students to decide for themselves what works for their dynamic. The programs teach students the tools they need to handle any co-living challenges when they arise confidently and grow in the process.
Rooted Life programs are designed for young people to increase self-awareness, learn leadership and general life skills, and build confidence to feel empowered to develop a sense of self-belonging, capability, and purpose. Rooted Life Adventures does not provide clinical services. Instead, the program focuses on therapeutic coaching within a wellness-oriented framework, offering virtual visits to students’ home clinicians as needed.
The Rooted Life Adventures head office is based in New Zealand, and the team is delighted to share the South Island with students and show them the very best of what New Zealand has to offer. We still have availability on our Spring Program from February 18th to April 27th, 2025. To organize a phone call, apply, or learn more about Rooted Life Adventures and the New Zealand Spring Program, please visit rootedlifeadventures.com - we would love to hear from you.
About Rooted Life Adventures:
Rooted Life Adventures is a small group adventure travel company that offers summer and gap year programs for teens and young adults, with integrated mental health support. Our programs provide young people with the opportunity to increase their self-awareness, learn leadership and general life skills, and build their confidence so they feel empowered to develop a sense of self-belonging, capability, and purpose.