Program Reviews

I had the most amazing experience with Seed Madagascar, the staff were all friendly and helpful and although living at the rural conservation project camp in Ste Luce was often challenging the support network between everyone there was incredible. I learned so much from talking to staff as well as when participating in the surveys being conducted at that time. Some of the most important things I feel my time at the project taught me however, were less academic and defiantly more personal. It taught me not to give up because the people of Ste Luce always managed to smile and laugh and get through the day no matter what was thrown at them, and also to appreciate what I have at home. After just 6 weeks I nearly cried when I came home and actually got to sleep on a proper bed, was amazed at light bulbs and switches, western toilets and food that did not contain rice! The last 3 things are actually in fact present in the town camp but as I spent 5 days there out of my 6 weeks and honestly enjoyed the rural camp more (spiders and all despite being at total wimp at home when it comes to them) I really did come to understand just how much I had taken for granted up until that point in my life.

In my opinion it is vital that more people do volunteering like this and I would recommend it to anyone. Westerners live in a society that takes many things for granted. Often life its self. Working in this part of Madagascar will be a harsh but seriously needed reality check for some people and I hope that they will accept the challenge to open themselves to how the rest of the world have to live, while also helping to improve things for local people and the environment while there. I have definitely come out of this experience a stronger and I believe a better person.

Spending ten weeks in Madagascar meeting such wonderful people, doing such amazing work and enjoying such a beautiful place is one of the best decisions I have ever made - join the programme!!

The variety of tasks that the charity is engaged in and which I was able to assist with is truly staggering and paints a picture of an organization which understands the interconnectivity of the problems affecting the people of the region. During the pioneer programme I assisted with conservation and climate change research, reforestation projects, community consultations, English teaching, sanitation projects, construction and probably more which I have forgotten. One particularly memorable task involved trekking up a remote river system in search of a critically endangered water palm to assist in a doctoral thesis.

I volunteered with SEED Madagascar in the Autumn/Winter of 2011 for 10 weeks. In this time I was part of a team helping to build a school in a rural village outside of Fort Dauphin, and towards the end of my time, we built fuel efficient stoves in remote communities in the surrounding area. Living in the areas where the projects were based, we met and worked with the people that these projects directly effect, making the work ever more rewarding.

I cannot recommend this programme enough, having come straight from sixth form at the time, I did a lot of developing and learning, the experiences I had will stay with me forever. The teams in the UK and Fort Dauphin are very supportive of all staff and volunteers before and during their time in Madagascar, they are always happy to help. We learnt the local language with lessons from our local guides, whilst getting involved with the local communities and culture. In short, I wouldn't think twice about returning to do this project again, this experience above and beyond anything similar.

Volunteering with SEED Madagascar was an eye-opening and rewarding experience. I went
in order to gain experience of ˨eld conservation projects and learned a tremendous
amount. The other volunteers, staff and guides were friendly and helpful. They were most willing to share ideas and discuss conservation issues which was a tremendous learning experience.

The work was varied and interested. We did transects searching for lemurs, reptiles and amphibians and bats, as well as tree counts. It was a fascinating insight into the biodiversity of the region.

Camp life in St. Luce was bliss. It is a beautiful environment, the food was excellent and there was a friendly and warm atmosphere. I would highly recommend volunteering with SEED.

I've been back home now for the past 4 weeks, and I'm still missing Sainte Luce! Being out there for 4 weeks you get into a routine so it was sad to leave the people and the beautiful landscape and wildlife behind. I decided to do my dissertation research whilst I was there, and had great support from both the London and Madagascar offices in helping to organise it and the good working relationship that Seed has with the local people made it easy to find participants!

I also joined the surveys and was amazed at how close we were to the local wildlife population, with a forest fragment only across the road from camp, and frequent visits from brown lemurs trying to steal bananas! The Malagasy guides are very informative and friendly and seem to have a natural ability to spot wildlife from a mile away- even from a moving taxi! The programme was very flexible allowing you to choose what activities you participated in and more importantly giving you plenty of time to take photos!

Although the idea of staying in a tent for longer than a week may put you off, investing in a good camping mattress meant that honestly you couldn't tell much difference, whilst the food was varied and there were plenty of opportunities to change it up a bit, including buying lobsters for £5! I think if you are considering volunteering in Madagascar but are a little bit hesitant about travelling alone, it is worth it in the end and was a lot less scary than I was expecting. More importantly, I knew that the money I was spending was genuinely going to the projects. My only regret is not organising to travel more around Madagascar, but this gives me an excuse to go back!

As a slightly older volunteer (43!) I wanted a teaching role for six weeks to ‘recalibrate’ from the work routine and the teaching English project was exactly what I needed; with the right combination of challenge and travel. It was huge fun to go in to such different teaching environment from classes of 75 smiling students to the local dedicated NGO staff, everyone was so engaged in the learning the language. I hope they will remember their English lessons, especially our tongue twister challenges! I’ve come back energised by the people and the place and I wouldn't hesitate to go back for another project.

I had the opportunity to take a career break at the start of 2016 and I wanted to spend some time volunteering in Africa, putting my environmental health and safety career expertise to good use and be a part of making a small difference to communities that would benefit from sustainable development initiatives. SEED Madagascar gave me the opportunity to do just that. Firstly, they are one of the only sustainable development charities that offers a short-term 3 month program, which fitted in with my schedule perfectly. They were also incredibly friendly, helpful in talking thrugh the different options available to me and flexible in their approach. I enjoyed the 10 week program so much, that I extended my stay for 2 weeks to offer my assistance in reporting projects back in the office.

The Pioneer offers something for everyone who is interested in international sustainable development. You get to be involved in education, health sanitation, sustainable livelihoods and conservation projects, which gives a great insight into the different types of work and a good understanding of the different interconnected factors at play when it comes to development and cultural behavioural change.

At first, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend 6 weeks on a construction site building a school building. However, this turned out to be my highlight and was so rewarding. You really get to live and work with the local community and can see that your efforts will actually make a real impact to a certain number of people. Within 6 weeks, we had almost completed a full school building and finished off painting the first and built 40 desks, so that an additional 160 students could attend the lycee. Whilst here, I also got the chance to teach the students English, which was a great experience. We were greeted through town each evneing as we went to get a cold beer at Lily's Bar with cries of our names from the children as we passed. It was a truly enriching experience and I couldn't recommend it enough.

Theres lots of stories & lots of memories! The people & scenery are fantastic, as is the wildlife. I should also point out that I am a little older than the usual volunteer (43) so if you are older, I would still recommend this. I will be going back anyway!

If you have a morbid fear of spiders, you're going to struggle as there are a lot! However, I was amazed at how beautiful spiders can be.

There were a couple of highlights though - walking back after a night transect towards the end of my stay, I still hadn't seen the infamous mouse lemur when about 100 yds from camp, I spotted the tel tale glow of eyes caught in my torch light & it slowly dawned on me that they weren't the wooly or dwarf ones we had been seeing on every night transect but much smaller. I initially thought that there were a few there then I realised that it was just one but moving VERY quickly! Good job he was quick really as we also spotted a snake in the tree trying to follow him! A few days later, Tsiriky or Hoobie came into camp & said that they had found a mouse lemur nest too which wasn't far away.

Then another day, we were out looking for seeds (for a reforestation project) when we spotted a tiny little iridescent gold frog sitting on one of the plants we were picking seeds from. none of the guides recognised it & so we took it back to camp for DNA testing (waiting for results)

One day the collared lemurs came through camp while I was chilling in the hammock. There must have been around 10 of them & one female came right down the branch to within 3 feet of me & hung there staring at me for a few minutes
Learning how to pin butterflies was pretty cool too

Then there was...

(apologies, I can't get any photos to upload for some reason, though I have loads!)

The most interesting about my stay, I found to see on how many ways you can do biological research. I have learnt a lot of it, it is not in my field of interest, but I think really important to understand how you can find out about the biodiversity. I found the azafady as organisation really respectful to the villagers and I had the idea we were going along with each other really well. Things we were doing, where birth spotting, pit traps, butterfly catching, PCQ and many more. I found it really special to live in a really basic place next to some small villages. Being really busy in the nature, every day walking and doing research. I was interesting to work together with all sorts of people of different background, different fields of interests and different countries. We had a antropologist, biologist, medicin and geogologist.

During my short stay at the Azafady camp and St Luce, I was treated to some incredible nature, a wide variety of activities, a brilliant social scene (football, cards and a few beers every now and then) and most importantly, genuine conservation opportunities that are really going towards helping the community and the wildlife.

The local community are very friendly and are pleased to have conservation workers there. Local understanding of the importance of conservation was obvious throughout the community and many members of the community now work for Azafady in order to help.