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Top Wildlife Volunteer Africa Positions

Let's face it - not all volunteer Africa positions working with wildlife will provide the experience you might be expecting.

Some will fall short because the work might not be of interest to you or insufficient training and support is given, bad accommodation, worse food, backbreaking labour and so on. But there is a way to shorten the odds in your favour...

How To Pick the Best Volunteer Africa Opportunities

So how do you effectively match your expectations with the reality of wildlife Africa volunteering to make sure you have a rewarding and fulfilling experience?

By asking a previous conservation Africa volunteer what their experience was like.

But that is not always possible because you might not know or know of such a person, so the next best thing is...

trip reports

... or volunteer journals as they are also known.

These are written by the Africa wildlife volunteer themselves describing their experiences in detail. It will give you an excellent idea of what the position is really like and whether it appeals to you or not.

The Top Volunteer Africa Companies

So when you have a basic idea where and which volunteering in Africa position appeals to you, the next step is to choose a volunteer company to organise it for you.

There are a reasonable amount of them in the market but some of them specialise in these positions so based on my experience, trip reports, forum opinions and general consensus in the industry here are my top three volunteer vacation company recommendations...

i-to-i: South Africa and Kenya conservation projects with offices in the UK, USA, Australia and Ireland.


Volunteer Adventures: Projects in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe - based in the USA.


Responsible Travel: Namibia and South Africa wildlife projects - based in the UK.


LEGEND: Full report icon = Full trip report Report summary icon = Trip summary

VOLUNTEER AFRICA TRIP REPORT JOURNALS - GROUPED BY COUNTRY


South Africa
Namibia

South Africa Volunteer Project Reports

Volunteer Company:
i-to-i

Volunteer Company:
Lion Monitoring Expedition

18 Sep - 9 Oct 2005
Three weeks

Joan Kenny, Ireland

Review Source: i-to-i

Joan had to adapt to an early-rise lifestyle where the volunteers and wonderful staff must function by the rules of nature and when the lions are most active.

The project itself consisted of finding the lions and checking their eating patterns each morning and night, providing many special moments... including getting stuck in warthog holes and everybody getting out to assess the situation only to realise they are being watched by lions mere metres away!

Joan's journal also contains some handy tips to future volunteers - Lion Monitoring Expedition in South Africa »

Full report


Volunteer Company:
i-to-i

Volunteer Project:
Save China's Tigers

7 Aug - 4 Sep 2005
Four weeks

Jenny Hammell, USA

Review Source: i-to-i

Jenny loved living in the "middle of nowhere" and without electricity for four weeks. The atmosphere at the farm house (in the Free State province) was relaxed and peaceful and the staff and volunteers all got along great.

The day to day work on the reserve was sometimes tough but always satisfying. Getting to know the tigers so well during her time there made it really difficult to leave but she found privileged to have contributed to saving a highly threatened species, the South China Tiger. Volunteer Africa tiger project report »

Full report


Namibia Volunteer Project Reports

Volunteer Company:
Gap Year for Grown Ups;
EHRA

Volunteer Project:
The Desert Elephant

October 2006
Two weeks

Xanthe Campbell, UK

Review Source: Review submitted

Xanthe spent two weeks in the harsh desert environment of Damaraland, Namibia. The first week was dedicated to the volunteer Africa project where she and others helped with the construction of protection walls around community water points, to prevent damage by the local elephants.

The second week was spent tracking the elusive desert elephants. This is where she really got the chance to rethink her life and got completely hooked on getting back to nature and having to make do with the bare minimum... Damaraland volunteer project »

Full report



Search for more trip reports of volunteer Africa trips using this dedicated search engine which contains travel reviews only (so searching for anything other than Africa trip reports here will yield no results) ...

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