Youth International Leadership

Each Youth International group is led by two experienced team leaders. The leaders are people with extensive backgrounds in experiential education and with extraordinary experience living, traveling, working, and studying in the countries they lead.

Youth International leaders typically have worked with the US Peace Corps, taught school, worked for foreign service organizations, or worked for other educational and service programs in Asia, Africa, or South America. Most have graduate degrees in areas such as alternative and outdoor education, service learning, and anthropology.

Specific background information on the leaders for each individual trip will be provided to team members well before the start of their journey.

Youth International also employs local people from each country to work with our teams in most of the places we visit. Usually these are people who live in the particular community in which the team is staying. These individuals normally have a personal connection to the community, the host families, and the projects on which we are working. Their intimate  understanding of the community and its people allows them to provide invaluable cultural insight and guidance for our team members.

Brad Gillings, founder and director of Youth International, began creating the program in 1995 and led its first team on a ten month around the world learning adventure through Asia and Africa in 1997.

Much of his time over the past seventeen years has been spent in Asia, Africa, and South America, where he has been active on the cutting edge of alternative learning, community volunteering, and world travel. This includes his eleven years with Youth International and, before that, his work with the world renowned experiential education, community service and performing organization Up With People, and with several private ventures. Brad was also a leader with the US National Service program AmeriCorps.

As a former consultant for the US National Crime Prevention Council, Brad has conducted workshops to train leaders from a spectrum of community service programs across the United States. He has also taught at the high school level in the United States, Canada, and Japan.

A published author, Brad has also written a number of articles concerned with humanitarian issues in developing countries.

After leading the second Youth International program through Asia for four months during the spring of 1998, Brad took a step back from continuous life on the road and now directs Youth International operations from the program’s office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is always available to speak with, and is always in continuous communication with team leaders for all programs while they are out on the road.