Orangutan voluntering in Borneo and Malaysia

The trip's strength lies in its unique collaboration of orangutan conservation organisations or individuals that exchange knowledge, advice and ideas towards orangutan conservation in this part of the world. Each project we organise has the shared vision of increasing the size and health of Bornean orangutan populations, bringing them back from the brink of extinction. By working together in this way were able to address the issues affecting the plight of the Orangutan and develop solutions for their long-term survival through shared knowledge.

Your help and manpower goes towards working with local people, Malaysian authorities and universities, and international experts and charities to find a sustainable solution to the problem of orangutan decline.

The organisation supports conservation and ecotourism that supports local communities and their native land rights. By giving money to tribal people they will protect their native lands. There is a much bigger effect to support communities through ecotourism than if you were to purchase the land yourself. So volunteer money goes direct to various activities and accommodation provided by local tribal people such as eco lodges, local produce, orangutan treks etc. Last year we directly contributed £50,000 to the local wildlife centre as a result of volunteers on the programme.

We use a dynamic mix of local and foreign facilitators who have been highly trained in conservation and welfare of volunteers. In Malaysia working with animals doesn’t fetch a good salary. By paying our local facilitators a good salary lets say equivalent to someone working in an office, and providing a career path to management, it has helped place conservation jobs as a sought after career path for graduates. All accommodation is owned by small family run businesses or by national parks.

Accommodation is low impact because its built in materials sourced in the area and resource use is low so we don’t use much water or electricity. Local village people were hired to build the accommodation. Food is low impact as we bring volunteers to buy local produce in local shops. There is no imported produce. Low impact on the culture by ensuring that our foreign guests are equipped to deal with local culture and customs.

We create experiential activities that promote local cultural and conservation knowledge exchange. i.e. learn to weave tribal looms, cook local tribal food. We encourage all volunteers to recycle when with us on our programmes and encourage them to do so when they go back home. Volunteers have commented on how they understand the need to buy Fairtrade after showing them the direct positive impact they have on purchasing goods from local villages. We are low impact as we run small groups of not more than 10 people.

Our UK office is used to communicate with volunteers. We prepare volunteers before they depart. Volunteers can meet us virtually or visit us in our offices. We carry out preservation surveys to assess the suitability of the volunteers as they book. If they fail they are given rejection counselling and educated on the impacts their answers may have on our projects, people and animals. If they agree with our response they submit the survey again. This allows us to educate volunteers and screen them better. As a result we pride ourselves in sending quality volunteers to our projects.

The biggest carbon footprint are the volunteer flights to our destinations. We are setting up a carbon scheme in East India to plant mangrove and reforest degraded areas to mitigate our company’s carbon emissions as well as our volunteers.