Trusted Community Programmes in South Africa

I really enjoyed the experience as a whole. Cape Town is a beautiful city to do tourism, and work as a volunteer was a amazing self-development experience. I felt like I was helping me and other people at the same time.

The program absolutely full filled my expectations. The reason why I chose the Shark project was for sure the sharks in the first place. I wanted to learn more about that beautiful species and wanted to get a closer look and first hand experience in that not so average business. It was an unbelievable experience and having close encounters with marine animals and especially with different kind of sharks almost every day is not to be put in words. I got to learn a lot about Marine Biology. The Marine Biologists definitely put a lot of effort in to teach us some very important stuff that is necessary when you study marine life (Presentations, data collecting on the boat and at local estuaries, catch and release of small sharks such as Pyjama sharks). An extra plus was working with tourists from all around the world and spreading the word to change their minds about those apex predators. The moment I got there I noticed how much they care for the ocean and our earth. We did a couple of beach clean ups, we cleaned their fishing line bins and even got to build our own. Every time we were out on sea and they found a piece of plastic they stopped and collected it. They are taking it very seriously which I thought is the best thing that can happen to this world. At this project education didn’t stop with Marine Biology. I got to work at their local penguin and seabird rehabilitation center and even got to do and assist the vet at an autopsy of a juvenile Penguin they found dead on one of their eco tourism tours. Even got to release two of their rescued African Penguins! Also our free time was filled with fun staff. Most of the time we had great weather so No-Sea-Days didn’t happen a lot. But when we had to face a No-Sea-Day due to a certain kind of wind we got to hike, did horseback riding and quad tours. Every Monday we had a Braai which meant that our Coordinators spend the evening with us and sometimes even one of our Marine Boilogists joined in. I got to experience a lot of quality time! The best time I’ve ever had and definitely the best decision I’ve ever made. I even got a really good friendship with one of the other volunteers out of that experience. So so grateful for everything.

I've really enjoyed volunteering in Cape Town in the project Cape Nature Conservation. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people, I've improved my abilities about environmental education with communities and understood how the African life work between environmental issues and cities' growth. This project of conversation has huge challenge and I've given my best on it.