GVI

I joined the Elephants & Gibbons program in Huay Pakhoot, near Chiang Mai, Thailand, and it turned out to be one of the most meaningful travel experiences I’ve had.

From the beginning, everything was very well organised, including airport pickup, accommodation in Chiang Mai, and transfer to the village. Once there, I stayed with a local homestay family and experienced simple village life while taking part in conservation and community activities.

Throughout the program, I learned how to collect behavioural and welfare data for elephants and gibbons, helped with activities on base and within the community, taught English to local children and mahouts, and learned traditional local skills from the villagers themselves.

The experience is very immersive and definitely not a luxury holiday. Expect basic living conditions, steep hikes, bugs, and physically demanding days at times — but that’s also what makes it feel authentic and rewarding.

One of the best parts was the people. The local community was incredibly welcoming, and the volunteers and interns were all very like-minded. I was even lucky enough to attend a local wedding and a blessing ceremony during my stay.

I originally planned to stay for only two weeks, but ended up extending my program because I enjoyed it so much.

If you’re looking for something more meaningful than a normal trip abroad, I would absolutely recommend this experience.

My son's experience with GVI’s Seychelles Marine Conservation Program was deeply disappointing and concerning. I would strongly discourage anyone from considering GVI. After a full month on site, he had not completed a single survey dive — the central focus of the program. The base was severely understaffed, with no dive instructors, inadequate housing, and poor communication. GVI was aware of these issues before his arrival, and yet they allowed a fresh group of participants to arrive anyhow. GVI later admitted to “operational challenges” and “temporary staffing gaps” but refused to issue refunds, offering only credit toward future programs or an extension. However, given our experience, we had serious concerns in GVI's ability to deliver a quality program, even elsewhere, and no longer trusted the organization. We tried to be patient and give them the benefit of the doubt but after 30 days of 60 day program term, their repeated attempts to stall and continued unresponsiveness led us to pull him and hope for an eventual resolution. We submitted multiple formal refund requests and even reached out directly to the CEO. After eventually filing a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau (U.S.), GVI finally responded, offering a refund and asking us to remove the complaint. They provided a partial refund and promised the balance per their terms, 6 months later. They did provide another partial refund at about 5 months at our request. May 3 was the 6 month mark. Despite a written confirmation on their part that the refund should hit our accounts at the most, a few days after the 3rd, still no refund. The mysterious and anonymous "GVI Feedback Team" responded once this week saying their issuing a ticket with finance to see what the issue is. This company's tendency to shield the names of any responsible individual behind a generic email and their horrific communication with students and families, has led to incredible mistrust and angst. As can be seen in many other reviews, this is a pattern, not an exception. I'll be reopening the BBB complaint ASAP after attempting to resolve everyday this week and will pursue every avenue to make sure GVI's reputation is well known so other may avoid our mistake. ~ Rob Vaughn

GVI Ghana was amazing!

Base was like home from home after the initial settling in, staff was friendly, professional and always ready to help. Based in Kokrobite, they told everything we needed to know safety, food, culture, how to be respectful and where we could and couldn't go.

Clean and safe base with running water (cold) and full kitchen for use. Plenty of storage for personal items, we where took to the mall once a week to buy anything we needed.

The dinamics between staff and intern/volunteers where relaxed and friendly which meant there was no staff/boss nerves when it came to projects. This also meant staff where always open to editing and switching projects around to see if trying something different would work better.

Trips on our weekends where fun and well planned by Faye who was amazing. She did everything from booking the stay and organizing travel we just had to pay her our share.

Everything from start to finish was excellent, they helped me with anything I needed. Including accommodated my disabilities and let me work at my own pace. I loved Ghana and would go back.

Run by scammers avoid at all cost. I spoke to one of the course reps for the Seychelles internship who sold to me the perfect experience in order for me to put down a deposit. After I had, I arranged a call with another rep the following week who told me multiple things I had been told were not true and hadn't even heard of some of them. Things including the price of the course, a career guarantee and equipment provided were all mis-sold to me. Naturally, I tried to cancel the course straight away through the 'Escalation Form' (the only means for a refund) which details you will receive a reply within two working days. I submitted this form around 3 weeks ago, no reply, no help from seemingly the only person who works for them when you call the help number. The company is completely disorganised and more concerned with securing deposits from people trying to make a positive change in the world than actually making a difference for young professionals. I would hate to see anyone else go through what I have, please consider other options for your own sake.

When I saw GVI's ad in between my Instagram stories, I got hooked onto them mentioning that they help recent graduates land careers in conservation and going to different countries. I was all ready to do an in-person internship until the loves of my life both got sick. I was so scared to leave them, but my value was still dropping. Then, I remembered there was the option to work from home. I did a remote internship so that I could get some net worth and obtain new skills, while still being with the loves of my life in their final moments.

The remote internship came with classes from Richmond University. The classes that were assigned to me were Wildlife Conservation and Careers in Sustainable Development. The material was easy to follow along with and the lecture speakers were really engaging. In Wildlife Conservation, there were more conservation success stories shared than what I read in my classes at college. Those success stories provided in this course gave me hope that human-nature cooperation is possible and that fueled me further in that direction. I got a certificate of competition from them. In Sustainable Careers, I learned many valuable skills like recognizing my values and writing monthly blogs on my LinkedIn page. Even though I finished that course, I didn't get receive my competition certification from them.

My projects were engaging and my internship manager was extremely helpful with teaching me how to do what I needed to do for each project. Each project lasted 8 weeks and there were 2 meetings with each awesome project manager. Even though I was unsuccessful with landing a job with any of them, I took each opportunity with them to network myself and share my availability. One of those project managers wrote a very positive performance review.

While I was in my remote internship, it didn't compromise my current job in any way, I was able to go to my best friend's wedding, I was able to hang out with other friends, and I got to make the most of the rest of my time with the loves of my life before I got to hold them when they passed on.

I would recommend going on a GVI experience at whatever point someone is at in their life. They have programs for everyone. I learned there is no career guarantee and that I don't get all my certifications, but the chance to learn valuable skills and meet like-minded people is worth it.