South Africa Teaching and conservation
Programme facts and Information
Teach children English, learn new skills and explore this beautiful part of South Africa and at the same time care for orphaned wild animals.
Every Monday we welcome a new group of 8 local underprivileged children for a week and give them the opportunity to discover, learn and become passionate about wildlife, conservation and their heritage. We need volunteers to give interactive lessons to the children and to take care of the orphaned wild animals by volunteering at the project you are also supporting the project toward its financial self sustainability while having a tremendous wildlife and cultural experience.
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Location = Krugger, South Africa
Dates = Year Round
Nearest airport = Hoedspruit airport
What's Included
- Your accommodation and meals
- Pickup from Hoedspruit
- 24 hour in country support
- Bedding
- Weekly trip to town
What's NOT Included
- Drinks
- Flights
- Visa
- Insurance
Suitable for Families - YES
Group Placements available - YES
Minimum Age =18 (unless part of a family group)
Will their be other volunteers? Yes we have up to 10 volunteers working on site at any one time
What will I achieve by supporting your work? The mission of this project is to inspire, motivate, develop and educate underprivileged children to care for the environment through the medium of a wildlife orphanage.South Africa large under-privileged population results in overcrowding of schools, where individual classes sometimes exceed 60 children per class. This results in many children not even being able to understand the basics of education.
Continual abuse of the environment is fundamentally caused by people who do not know or understand how essential the environment is for our own survival. Most children, throughout the world, live in villages, towns or cities where the indigenous wildlife has for many years been eliminated. Although the wildlife is their heritage, many do not have the means or opportunity to even see a giraffe.
What will a typical day be like? When people consider taking part in a volunteer project overseas, many imagine sleeping in the most basic of accommodation and eating next to nothing. On arriving at the project, you begin to realize that this is not the case! The day starts at 7am with coffee or tea and then we all go on the dog walk with the children. These kids come from a school in the local village and stay with us for 5 days. During their time here, they learnt a variety of lessons, which will help them in their future. After the morning dog walk, there are lots of animal related chores to be done, like cleaning the animal camps and preparing food for some of the animals. The volunteers and the children, who rotate jobs daily, do these jobs. After these jobs are completed, we have breakfast.
When breakfast is finished we start the daily teaching programme. This consists of 2 lessons before lunch and 2 after. The lessons are led by a volunteer but sometimes 1-to-1 sessions are needed to help the children in subjects that they find most difficult. Once morning lessons are finished, we eat lunch and then the kids like to go swimming. One volunteer is required for lifeguard duty but others can have some free time or swim with the kids is they want to.
After the swimming session, the kids get changed and then afternoon lessons start. Again, these lessons are led by a volunteer but other helpers will be needed in most lessons to give extra assistance to the children who find a subject hard. There are 2 lessons in the afternoon session with a 15-minute break in between. When lessons have finished, the children and volunteers take the dogs for another walk and then the children help with the feeding of the animals. All of the meat-eating animals are fed in the evenings and the children tend to be fascinated by watching them eat!
Before dinner, the volunteers lead social talks with the children. These are informal discussions, which address common issues, which could affect the children in their everyday lives. These include talks about respecting the environment, drug misuse and safe sex. After the social talk, we all eat dinner. Then, after dinner, we play an educational game with the children before they go to bed. We have games like Pictionary, trivial pursuit and bingo, which the kids all love to play. The winners from the games win a prize from the prize box. All of the kids win at least one prize during the week and are all very excited to see what they will win! Once the game has finished, the kids go to bed. After this, we sometime play a few games of cards with the other volunteers, socialize, or have an early night, ready to do it all again tomorrow!
It is important also to say that sometimes we have to stop the teaching programme because there is something very important to do or to share with the children such as seeing a lion on the next door farm, saving an animal, helping the vet etc. It is so exciting to get into action!!!
The project is a tiring but very rewarding. Although the days are long, it is great to be able to have such an impact on less privileged children and to make their week as enjoyable as possible. From shy, quiet children on day 1, the kids leave feeling confident and ready to get home and tell their family and friends about the amazing time they had.