The Leap
Don't just walk through life: take the Leap.
Voluntary placements in Africa, South America, Asia and Australia, combining work in some of the most exclusive safari camps/eco-lodges in the world, with effective and life changing conservation and community projects.
A Unique Leap…
We are the only company to offer this fascinating mix of conservation, community and eco-tourism projects - the 3 Leaps in each placement. Escorting guests on safari, helping stop poaching in a private game reserve and teaching English to orphaned children are just some of the experiences awaiting you.
This diversity and variety in each placement will broaden your horizons and surpass your expectations. Flexible departure dates. 12, 10 or 6 week schemes including a Summer Team Leap.
Member since: 27 Apr 2006
How the minimum criteria of the responsible travel standard was met...
Economic responsibility
- The Leap ensures that approximately 60% of the cost of each volunteers scheme is paid to the project leader in-country to cover all their in-country costs. This includes paying local communities for food and accommodation.
- In addition we pay communities a donation as described above and source all food, drink, equipment, fuel locally thereby enhancing the local economy. We employ in-country as many staff as we can – in Kenya for instance we employ 2 local managers, a project leader a cook, 2 security guards, a cleaner and a driver, thereby doing as much as we can to provide local people with jobs, cutting down on unemployment and providing families with an income.
- We also recognise that volunteers spend their own money on drinks, transport, souvenirs, services (taxis), medical care, park fees, activities e.g. rafting, diving, climbing etc which are major contributors to local suppliers incomes and the overall economy.
Environmental responsibility
- The Leap ensures that all its volunteers are briefed before they depart and on arrival on how best to protect conservation of the natural environment and wildlife, as well as local initiatives such as litter collection. Our project in Costa Rica includes litter collection on the local river.
- Our teams are normally no bigger than 10 -12 per departure and most foodstuffs are bought locally and resources such as heating in camps where possible is done in an environmentally friendly fashion e.g. solar panels.
- In the UK we recycle as much as we can and always use paper twice, use long lasting light bulbs and have employees working flexibly from home cutting down on the amount of driving and pollution.
Social responsibility
- The Leap ensures that all its programmes work with the full agreement of local elders and that volunteer’s work side by side amongst the community. More often living in the community. We pay the communities for looking after volunteers and every volunteer has a donation to the community included in the cost – currently £80 per person. This is used to buy materials to build classrooms, pay for education fees and so on.
- We also work alongside local charities as often as we can supporting their aims.
- All volunteers and Project Leaders are fully briefed on the destination, host community, local culture, religions, customs and particularly ways of behaving.
