This investigation serves as one of the first empirical analyses to examine the international volunteering gap year from an educational perspective, concluding an in-depth case study of a prominent gap year organisation in the UK. Contrary to widespread industry promotion of international development, the findings suggest that the experience can be better understood as an educational endeavour for the volunteers. However, the ways and rates at which learning takes place in these experiences are complex and require a synthesis of multiple educational paradigms to capture. The study presents the international volunteering gap year as an experiential educational pedagogy that fuses civic engagement with significant personal, moral, civic and intellectual development.