At Esendex, employees are offered the opportunity to take some days off work to do some volunteering and charity work. Katherine, our Management Accountant had such a great time volunteering last year that she packed her rucksack to do it all again! – she volunteered with the lions in South Africa last year. This time round she went to a wildlife rescue centre in Thailand.
Take a look at what she got up to below;
I worked for the elephant refuge and Education Centre part of the project, where we had 6 rescued street elephants to look after – The Elephant Refuge and Education Centre (EREC).
The Elephant Refuge and Education Centre offers refuge and a sustainable existence to elephants forced to work on the streets as begging tools and tourist attractions. As a volunteer on this project we were responsible for 1 or 2 elephants between 2 of us each day, and cared for all their needs between 6.30am – 5.30pm. Work started early to avoid the heat! There were also mahouts employed by the centre to assist us with the elephants, especially needed when we had to bring them back from a jungle walk / river swim and they were just too happy to continue eating bamboo than obey our english instructions. Sweetcorn was often used as a good bribe, but was not always effective.
Tasks involved feeding, showering and walking the elephants -as well as heading into the banana plantations in local villages to harvest around 200 banana trees to bring back for the elephants to feed on. This was always considered the worst job due to the amount of fire ants in the fields and the blistering heat of the day we faced whilst lugging trees.
Volunteers ranged from all parts of the world – UK, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and the comradery between the workers was great fun.
If you have enjoyed reading this, you might also be interested in reading volunteering with the lions in South Africa
