Volunteering in South Africa – Jessie’s Experience of a Lifetime!

The Wildlife Sanctuary project was honestly a life changing experience! It was also a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am so glad I had the chance to go. A lot of people weren’t sure what type of work we would be doing while volunteering in South Africa at the sanctuary. Some volunteers came in thinking all we would be doing is playing with the animals. While we did plenty of that, we still had to do a lot of manual labor, such as cleaning the horse and elephant stalls, weeding and cleaning up the predator pens. I actually enjoyed the tasks because I knew we were actually making a difference. Other tasks included building enclosures, digging out an elephant watering hole, mixing cement, etc. I think without the sanctuary’s volunteer program this incredible experience would not possible.

While our days were mostly spent outside in the sun doing work, we still got to do plenty of fun things. We had two days a week where we could do whatever we wanted and they had a ton of different excursions we could pick from. We were done with work by 4 pm and basically had the rest of the evening to do whatever we wanted. I really enjoyed just hanging out with the other volunteers playing card games and just talking. The saying for the whole week was, “we work hard, but we play hard as well.”



One of the coolest thing I did there was go on the elephant walks in the morning. It was so amazing to just walk with these animals and be able to touch them and take pictures with them; there is really nothing like it. Another really cool thing was playing with the lion cubs. They were always so playful and cute and that’s honestly something I will never get the chance to do again.

The Wildlife Sanctuary project really opened my eyes, I was able to meet so many different people and learn about their different cultures as well. I want to thank GoEco one more time for allowing me to have this amazing opportunity. I will definitely remember volunteering in South Africa for the rest of my life.