numerous opportunities to get involved in monitoring, or conducting surveys. Heading to a remote location, learning to dive and spending your days with transects and fish counts can be idyllic but ask yourself what is that data, and your effort, going towards? What is being done with that data? And do any of the local stakeholders – community, or government – actually want or need that work done?
If the project is really there to have an impact, you should be able to be told a very clear objective.
Who are they working with?
They say no man is an island, and the same is true for conservation work. An organisation can come in and do the work, but if they aren’t building capacity, or ability, of the local government or local community, the long-term impact is minimal. Ask how closely the organisation is working with the government; what kind of ties they have to the community and how they are communicating their data or activities?
Every situation is different, so there’s no right way to go about this but you want to see that your volunteer work doesn’t exist in isolation, and that the organisation is operating in an open and collaborative manner with its local stakeholders.
What are you getting out of it?
If you’re volunteering to get experience in marine conservation for your career, these type of programmes are a great stepping stone. It’s good to keep in mind that it takes time for you to build up the skills to be effective and therefore ‘useful’ to the project. In many cases it can take up to six weeks to learn survey techniques, or the systems and processes a project has for community work. Volunteering for less than a month doesn’t really give you, or the conservation much benefit.
Remember that doing this kind of experience isn’t unique to pool of budding marine conservationists. If your CV simply states that you volunteered for six weeks, it doesn’t set you apart from the pack. Try to identify what skills you have taken away from it beyond data collection, for example. Were you a particularly fast learner? Were you given a position of responsibility ahead of your peers? Did you help solve a conflict or come up with a new, more efficient system?
At the end of the day, it’s up to you to make the most out of a volunteer experience but aligning yourself with an effective, well-managed organisation means you can gain higher quality experience whilst having a positive impact on the world. If you are ever in doubt, ask yourself – is the conservation there for the volunteers, or are the volunteers there for conservation? If it’s the latter, dive in and have fun!
Sam is the Senior Programmes Officer for Zoox, which runs bespoke professional development experience programmes for early-career marine conservationists. Working closely with the UNEP initiative Green Fins, Zoox gives volunteers a chance to dive into hands-on practical skill development and drive a more sustainable marine tourism industry in SE Asia.
December 2016 - Sustainable Travel
34 - SEVENSEAS