GoEco - Volunteer Abroad

I will never forget the wonderful memories shared as we worked with staff and children at Limuru Children's Centre, The Nest, Half-Way House, and also helped with Community Outreach. It was an unforgettable, eye-opening, and heart-warming lifetime experience! Kenya is a truly beauitful country filled with vibrant, lively, and amazing people. It was a trip of a lifetime!

This program is a real conservation and community program. Both targets equally reached. You help identifying the cats, tracking them, counting the other animals... you're fully involved in all steps and you come very close to the cats. So many exciting moments! You share your experience and culture with the Masai students and spend some time with the women's goup. You are fully immersed in the mara and its bush life. You are reminded of how valuable water is. You get back to your roots, living in complete harmony with nature. An experience I will keep in my heart forever.. and I hope to be able to come back very soon.

This project is amazing. I loved how it was diverse, with conservation work, teaching young children and also students around my age, and the opportunity to see outreach work. There was still a good balance and we were not stretched too thin across these different activities. I have learned so much about wildlife and the struggles that accompany conservation in the Maasai Mara ecosystem, and so much about Maasai culture and their way of life. Especially important is the interest Ive developed for these topics. And, of course, the friendships made are extremely rewarding and valuable to me.

I had a wonderful time at this program. I most liked there the variety of activities that we had. Every day we had a different activity with the lions and even sometimes with other wild animals in Zimbabwe (like game drive and elephants). The people at the program are very kind and caring to the volunteers. I sincerely recommend this experience and I will come back with out a doubt to volunteer there again.

My trip to the Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre was incredible. Since this was the first time I was traveling abroad alone, this was the perfect trip for me. The volunteer program is very well established and the coordinators are very welcoming and accommodating. Daily duties start early in the morning with the cleaning of enclosures and feeding of the animals. A delicious breakfast is then served at a nearby lodge- just a short bushwalk away. Afterwards, more cleaning takes place. In the afternoon, there is typically a break where volunteers may spend time with the animals, relax, or go on various scheduled trips to nearby attractions. Volunteers typically feed their assigned animals later on during afternoon rounds. In the evening, volunteers go to dinner at the same lodge as breakfast and relax in the common room afterwards. Nothing is certain from day to day. I had the opportunity to go on a 'hippo run' to feed the wild animals on the property, take a baby black rhino for a walk, watch a pack of wild dogs feed, bury one of the centers beloved lions, see the rare 'king cheetah,' and much more. Friends of mine who stayed at the center for a longer period of time also had the opportunity to help capture a wild leopard, cut up a donated elephant carcass, and sleep under the stars with wild animals nearby. It was the trip of a lifetime! If you can, go for at least a month!!! It is completely worth it- you will see and learn so much!

Working next to the animals every day... seeing that each one of them had an individual personality was breathtaking. The leopards were fierce, sleek and playful, the wolves invincible and totally dependent on each other all at once, and the tortoises - they will never finish last in my mind.

I feel I have achieved a lot on a personal level. This is mainly because I had never travelled to this part of the world or lived in this kind of environment before. I have learnt a lot about photography, a new culture and country. They have also allowed me to challenge myself and I shall leave feeling a little more self-confident and happy I achieved many new happenings in such a short space of time; safe in the knowledge that I can have an incredible time and hopefully give something back to a situation, despite initially feeling very nervous and apprehensive about what lies before me.