Project Abroad, the best way to discover real life

This was my second experience with Project Abroad (the first with two amazing projects in Cambodia in September 2023) and now I can confirm that after an experience with this organization, you’ll never travel looking to a new place with the same eyes.

I’m a 56-year-old Italian woman and I travel a lot but I love to visit new countries doing Project Abroad volunteering projects.

Why? Because with them you’ll have the opportunity to know real life and local people, to live with them and to know how they are wonderful, smiling and really kind even though they live much more simply than us (or probably because of this).

This time my husband came with me and I realised that he appreciated every minute of our shared experience despite the hot and wet weather, the shared bathroom (when we travel alone usually we search for rooms with a private bathroom every time) with only cold water showers and the hard work during the project.

Together we decided to go to Sri Lanka and work for the Sea Turtle Conservation Project in Galbokka.

We’re bank employees so we haven’t any experience to offer… only our hands and of course our hearts. But the center staff is so kind and supportive that after only one day we felt like we knew each one of them like they were our kids.

We’ll never forget any of them: Nimna and his smile, nicknamed Joker because he loves to joke with everyone; Kaveesha, the singer and artist, with his wonderful voice and his passion for Spiderman (his nickname); Kaveen alias Jerry, big and sweet eyes, who helped us to release our small baby turtles. And finally, of course, Charith, the Turtles center ‘boss’ is always busy but a really good friend to everyone in the center.

A typical work day in the center includes cleaning the turtle's tank, feeding them after cleaning fish to give them, digging holes in the sand in order to hide turtles' eggs from predators, washing turtles, and a lot of other work. Each day is different and exciting so you’ll forget the hard work.

Turtles are wonderful and baby turtles are so nice and cute… I loved them so much. We released them two times, one at sunset and one at midnight after patrolling the beach to search for eggs. This has been a wonderful experience because we went to the hatchery and we discovered that babies were born… what a great emotion. During the project, we lived in a local family home and we enjoyed every moment with them. Our hostess Senanee is really kind and helpful in every moment and she is surely one of the best cooks in Sri Lanka! We felt like family with her, her daughter Nuhansa, her husband Ramidu, and her mother-in-law, and always safe.

After our two-week project, we decided to make a week's trip around this wonderful country and we enjoyed every moment.

So, I wrote a lot about my experience, and if you want you can read my 2023 review about Project Abroad. I think you could understand how well-organized, safe, and serious is this organization. They are really careful about volunteers' safety and I think it’s great to become a Project Abroad volunteer, no matter what age you are...so go ahead, sign up, and start packing!

For everything else, there's Project Abroad 🥰