Working at CROW can be an unbelievable involvement opportunity if you are prepared to put in hard, long hours in the hope to make the charity successful. Volunteering at the animal rehabilitation centre offers the chance to get actively involved in an organisation where every staff member is so devoted to their values, allowing for an experience like no other.
Working for CROW
For myself being an international student from the United Kingdom, the chance to go to such a beautiful country and work for a company in a culture that is so different from back home, seemed to be a once in a life time opportunity that I could not miss out on.
However, this is not a scheme where you can go and travel around Africa and do a little bit of volunteering in your free time. The work is early starts and tiring days where the care for the animals remains the number one priority. If you make the most out of the work and put in one hundred per cent, the experience proves to be very rewarding.
The team at CROW is relatively small; therefore the workers really appreciate the efforts that we volunteers put in. This means that your ideas and opinions are massively respected by everyone working at CROW and you immediately feel like an integral part of the team as opposed to just a spare part bring told what to do. The work that the volunteers do, especially within the PR team is reliant on the volunteer’s initiative. Instead of being told what to do and when to do it by, you are able to come up with your own ideas and take your time to make sure that the work is good enough to market the centre. If this work is used, then you will definitely feel a sense of acceptance and accomplishment. For example, I was involved in a meeting which the topic of discussion was what type of new merchandise the centre should bring in. My ideas were taken under consideration and even my thought of using traditional African products with the CROW symbol embedded into it, was massively liked and is being thought about being used. It’s aspects like this that really makes you feel like you are a part of the community despite being very new to the centre. Everyone’s opinions and thoughts are equally reflected upon.
Other Volunteers
Outside of working, you share a house with the other helpers. For myself, I arrived to live with 7 other volunteers all from different nationalities from myself. By sharing accommodation with people from France, Chile, Germany, Denmark and Austria, it meant that I had to engage with people from different backgrounds and nationalities compared to my own. This allowed for the opportunity to participate with other cultures and form great friendships you wouldn’t normally make.
Whether you are volunteering within the PR team or the clinic team, you have the chance to work with different types of people and learn forms of communications to gain the best results for the animals.
Working with the Animals
Geese, Mongooses, Monkeys and even Baboons are just a few of the animals that CROW accommodate for at the centre. Whether they have been injured or orphaned, CROW will look after them and hope to release them back into the wild when they are ready, or if that is not possible, they will give them a place to stay that offers them the best form of life they can get. For the animals that are released back into the wild, it can be a heart-warming thing to see. If you are part of the rescue, you are able to see the animal grow into its fit self again and recover to a state where it’s best to be back out into natures surroundings.
Working with the animals to achieve CROW’s key values of honesty, integrity, professionalism, compassion and commitment gives us a great sense of doing something morally good for the animal community.