If you haven't applied for your passport yet, DO IT NOW! You must have your passport in your hands at least 6 months before your intended date of departure. Your passport allows you to leave and return to your home country; without it you cannot travel out of your home country. Your government issues your passport.

If you are an American Citizen, a passport application can be obtained and submitted at your local post office. For further information on getting your passport, please visit Passport Service.

If you are a Canadian Citizen, please visit Passport Canada for further information.

Be especially careful to follow the directions about photos and birth certificate. DO NOT send the passport application to IYWT. You must apply for your passport yourself and give all necessary information to the appropriate authorities. If you are holding a foreign passport for a county other than the country in which you are now living, please contact IYWT directly.

When you receive your passport, YOU MUST SIGN IT WITH YOUR FULL LEGAL NAME AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR PASSPORT. Also, note the passport number, date of issue, place of issue, and date of expiration for your files. Finally, make several photocopies of the inside vital statistic page and place them in several secure locations.

• Get your passport
• Sign your passport
• Check the expiration date of your passport
• Make BLACK & WHITE photocopies of your passport
• Create a digital copy of your signed passport (e-mail this to yourself or save it to a thumbdrive)

You will be travelling on a Tourist Visa. The United States and Canada maintain a 'visa waiver' program meaning for most countries you may go to, you will not have to apply to that government for a visa, it's issued automatically when you get off the plane and enter immigration in your host country. However, there are still some countries, where you must first have a Tourist Visa issued into your passport. We will advise you when we have contact from you if you're on the 'visa waiver program' or if we will have to get your passport visaed.

This is a form that It's Your World-Travel! provides to you when the tickets are issued. It is mandatory that this form be signed and notarized not more than 5-7 days prior to your departure. Your parents may edit the form to be more liberal or restrictive. Because of your young age, authorities and especially airlines may challenge you as to why you are leaving this country or why you are in a foreign country without your parents. Having this form securely attached to your passport, will prevent an airline or government official from sending you home prematurely. This has happened to other students who failed to bring this form with them.

• You may use the attached generic form (fill-in all blank areas) OR you can modify it to suit your needs, ie more/less restrictive, add countries or areas of the world the student is authorized to visit with the host family, etc.
• It must be signed by any person having legal custodial/visitation rights. It cannot be signed by step parents or any other relative unless they have a legal custodial/visitation right.
• It must be notarized. BUT NOT MORE THAN 10 days prior to departure. (If notarized too early, some airlines and government officials may think one parent may have changed their mind since signing.
• Staple it 4 times into the passport-this avoids officials from taking it out of the passport. (Hold the last 3 visa pages together, staple face side up and fold to passport size-3 pages gives it body and avoids it being easily dislodged from the passport). If an official needs a copy, they can unfold it and copy it without removing it from the passport.
• DO NOT ALLOW ANY ONE TO REMOVE THE ORIGINAL FROM YOUR PASSPORT
• Keep it in your passport until you have returned home.
• Make a copy or scan onto your desktop. If the original is lost from the students passport and a copy is needed overseas, it can be sent.