Feeling useful

Well,
About this volunteering experience I wanted to focus on how I felt myself being useful and helpful to the world.
I worked on the Marine Conservation Project with dolphins, where we collected data for research everyday on hoe many dolphins there were and how many tourists and how the tourists were affecting their behaviour.
For me, as a Biologist, doing things that come with science and conservation is my passion and what I aime to do for life.
So, having this amazing experience allowed me to see what I really want for my future, specially when it comes to deciding the group of animals I want to work with: marine mammals and how feeling useful as a scientist is absolutely essencial for my well-being.

The contact with the locals and the boat drivers was something that made me to even love more the project. This close contact allows you to see how important it is to have the community working with you and to be able for the project to work. Besides that, you get to see how their life is and how they live, how is there culture, their food,...
For me, having this experience is essencial and I could find it all at this project.

But, I had some little disappointments when it comes to the high price that we pay and how I couldn't see this money being truly used: the food wasn't very good; one of the teaching projects was going to stop because they had no money for fuel.
For the amount of money we pay and the amount of people at the project it makes no sense, at my point of view, for this to happen.
We were told that to feed all the kids from the schools the project worked at, for 1 month, they spent only 200 dollars! Each one there was paying around 2100 dollars per week!
The maths don't match.

But, even with these problems, I would recommend it, specially because I see the project changing things and helping people. And because it allows you to have amazing experiences that you will never forget!