Volunteer with elephants in Sri Lanka
Are you looking for an adventurous trip with a purpose, or on a gap year or career break? If you want to make a difference in some of the world’s most important conservation areas - and in community projects - then volunteer trips are for you! Volunteers tend to have a sense of adventure, and come from a range of different backgrounds and from all over the world.
Edward Abbey said 'sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul'.
How Volunteer with elephants in Sri Lanka makes a difference
Environment
The main purpose of this volunteering programme is to provide a chance to volunteers to learn about elephants and working with them. From there, volunteers are able to learn so much thing about elephants which includes elephant communication, elephant living habits, elephant diet and many more. This provides volunteers to understand more about elephants and indirectly animals and the environment and thus increase their awareness on wildlife an environmental issues.
The programme also includes educating tourist who visit the centre and optional activities such as teaching children informal English. This is a good way for the volunteers to share what they have learned and hopefully get to inspire other visitors and the children to do the same.
Community
Elephants and humans have been interacting for decades and our lives in Sri Lanka are so entwined that we could not live without them. If we are to help elephants in the wild we first need to help solve human issues and then the human-elephant conflicts.
Our project and volunteers work in the local villages and provide the school children with free after-school English classes with environmental messages which have been well received by all. These classes are a great way for the children to meet, normally, native English speaking people and both can benefit from cultural exchange. These sessions are always remembered by our volunteers with saying that they were the highlight of the trip.
It’s only recently that we have made the discovery that elephants do not like bees and we are experimenting with bee boxes, the honey produced will be processed by the villagers providing them with another source of income. Before this the villagers used bells, they had many tree houses manned overnight in the area and if an elephant is seen they ring the bell to alert the villagers and scare the elephant away. These low impact initiatives are helping the local communities to live in harmony with the wild Elephants reducing damage caused by these gentle giants.
Volunteer with elephants in Sri Lanka
1of6
