IVHQ Victoria Falls

The accommodation was amazing for a volunteer house, you got your own room and would share a bathroom between 2-3. The rooms had fans in case it got too hot, although I found I didnt need to use mine. Your rooms and bathrooms would be cleaned everyday and laundry was done for free every Thursday if you wanted it. The food was AMAZING, the chef made his own bread which was delicious! There was a lot of variety and you could go into town and buy food to keep in the fridges if you wanted your own food. There was also free wifi.

Justine is the person who runs the programme and she helps organise weekend activities and any taxis into town. Booking activities through her can get you up to 10% off the normal prices.

The work you do can involve removing pest crops, maintaining roads, litter picking, planting trees at the local school and animal surveying and monitoring as well as many other things. I was lucky enough to be there for a rhino relocation project, whereby a young male rhino was sedated and moved to an enclosure for its own safety as the dominant male would try and kill it due to competition for females. They also took us to see Victoria Falls and showed us the local town.

My tips would be make sure you have a sleeping bag, walking boots, gardening gloves, binoculars, plenty of money for activities at the weekend and if you're going in the summer months take warm clothes as it was very cold at night!

I would 100% recommend this programme to anyone who has a passion for conservation and the environment and wants to be pushed out of their comfort zone.