‘My mates back home think I am crazy, but I wanted to do something more worthwhile than just backpacking around the place,” says Peter Williams, a geography graduate from the United Kingdom who has paid well-earned money to volunteer his services to assist various environmental projects in South Africa.
Williams is one of more than 200 international visitors who have participated in a volunteer-driven programme called Bio-Experience, dreamed up by 27-year-old conservation student Natanya Dreyer.
The programme has been so successful that it won the prestigious title of Overall Winner: Emerging Project in this year’s Green Trust Awards, South Africa’s premier environmental awards.
Bio-Experience is innovative in that it captures the country’s rising tourism status and combines it with a desire among adventure travellers for a wilderness experience that involves more than watching animals from the back of a game vehicle.
‘It is something completely different, and looks good on my CV when I apply for jobs back in the UK,” comments maths graduate Larry Morgan. Like Williams, he spent his vacation working at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob), assisting with the rescue, cleaning and ultimate release of oiled penguins.
Morgan and Williams also spent a month each helping out at Klipkop Nature Conservancy in Gauteng and at Apes, a non-profit organisation in KwaZulu-Natal dedicated to the rehabilitation of vervet monkeys and other primates. At these projects they were primarily involved in erosion control, fencing and building maintenance.
Bio-Experience is a win-win programme. Venues are carefully selected according to their needs, benefiting not just from the enthusiastic labour but also financially from the volunteers’ contributions. The volunteers’ basic costs are covered and the projects benefit through a feedback system based on donations per volunteer they host.
Most volunteers are international tourists who pay for a working holiday, assisting with everything from erosion and invader plant control to cleaning cages and helping with game counts. Local volunteers are also encouraged.
For the beneficiary projects, the scheme is a breath of fresh air. Sanccob CEO Alan Jardine emphasises the role of volunteers within his organisation. ‘We have a full-time staff of only 10 people, and we cannot do it alone,” he says, adding that the relationship with Bio-Experience is built on trust and goodwill.
‘These Bio-Experience volunteers have actively contributed to the conservation of the African penguin,” says Jardine. He cites recent scientific research indicating that the African penguin population is 19% higher than it would have been without the work of Sanccob.
It is this kind of feedback, added to the enthusiasm she witnesses among the volunteers, that motivates Dreyer’s work. She believes the sky is the limit to this venture.
‘We have 30 volunteers working around the country at any one time and have bookings up until November 2004,” she says. ‘The demand is so strong that my
marketing is minimal. I am just responding to a need, both from the volunteers’ side and from needy environmental projects.”
Find out more about Bio-Experience at (021) 557-4942, or visit their website.