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Price From: 9,085 USD
Operator:
GVI - Global Vision International
Price From:
9,085 USD
Ideal Age Range:
19 to 30,
31 to 50,
Over 51
Fitness Needs:
Moderately Fit
Program duration:
24 weeks
Trip Dates:
01-01-2017
Travel to Thailand and join an exciting elephant conservation internship with GVI. Interns will participate in three areas, including: Community education, plant diversity, and elephants.
Internships are geared towards improving leadership skills and arming interns will both hard and soft skills that will set you apart in the job force.
The focus of the internship is on ensuring that these captive elephants are successfully reintroduced into protected forest. Your contribution will help the conservation of this beautiful animal species, by providing the funding and hands-on support needed to keep this project going.
The overall goal of the project is to have semi-wild herds of elephants living in their natural habitat, supervised by their mahouts.
This internship consists of 3 aspects – community (teaching), plant biodiversity (with an emphasis on elephant foraging) and elephants. Each of these projects is run independently, but are integrated and highly relevant to each other. The community project consists of teaching English within the community and to the elephant keepers (mahouts), as well as following a program that supports community efforts to reduce their financial dependence on their elephants. The plant biodiversity project involves researching elephant foraging habits and working towards formulating a foraging guide based on the observations made on our elephants.
The elephant project consists of leading elephant health checks, studying the behaviour of our herd, and educating other volunteers about Asian elephants. While each project has many established aspects, interns are encouraged to develop their own ideas and introduce new aspects to these projects. Although you will be able to enjoy hiking with the elephants 5 days of the week, the rotation of the internship means your responsibilities will shift during the course of your stay.
After a successful internship, qualifying candidates may be given the opportunity to work for affiliated partner organizations in Thailand or around the world. Fieldwork positions can be paid or unpaid, range in duration from one month to one year, and availability varies.
During your first 6 weeks, you will work alongside other volunteers and learn about the day to day running of the project. Your days will be split between morning hikes into the Chiang Mai forest with the elephants and their mahouts.
In the afternoons you will return to base where there will be lectures on elephant keeping and other training needed to assess the elephant’s health and conduct surveys in the forest. The following 6 weeks will see you go through training sessions with previous interns/staff where you will learn more about the 3 aspects incorporated into this internship.
The final 12 weeks of your internship will be spent running and organizing each intern project for one month each. Our elephant conservation internship will allow you to work closely with our elephant herd, their mahouts and the local community in an effort to promote sustainable eco-tourism.
| Flag |  |
| Continent: | Asia |
| Official Language(s) | Thai |
| Capital: | Bangkok |
| Population | 67,959,000 (2015 estimate) |
| Climate(s) | Tropical Savanna, Monsoon, Equatorial |
| Major Airport(s): | Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK), Phuket International Airport (HKT), Chiang Mai International Airport (CNX) |
| Economic Driver(s): | Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Manufacturing, Energy, Tourism, Banking/Finance |
