Life time experience

Hi I'm Daisy, I'm from Britain and I have just done a month with GVI in Greece working with turtles. I have seen things that I never thought I would see and made life long friends from all over the world. With this program we did a variety of things from seeing turtles laying nests at night to seeing baby hatchlings hatching in the morning, the feeling of knowing you have helped an endangered species is probably one of the best things you can feel.

The day to day life in camp if your on a morning survey is you get up about 5.30 then at 6ish you head off down to the beach. You would check for tracks and nests or for hatchlings etc and then protect and make note of what's happened. Once your morning survey was done you head back to camp this is normally around 9.30 10 then you have free time until about 5.30 which is when you have presentations. For me free time was napping in the hammocks but for most it was heading to the beach and tanning or sitting at the taverna. For the first 2 weeks of your trip there's an education program and this taught me so much about the world and epecially conservation and what effects it so much for example plastic pollution, since learning about that and seeing photos of how it harms turtles I try my hardest not to use plastic. After 2 weeks you do other activities like shading where you put shading up to shade the hatchlings from lights you also do data logging or beach profiling.

You get the weekends off and getting to experience the Greek culture is amazing, the whole GVI environment is relaxed and welcoming, from the moment you meet the staff in the airport even after leaving the camp, the staff are very supportive and extremely passionate about what they do it makes you want to do more. For me it's made me want to go on other GVI programs doing conservation for animals and also welfare for children. The staff are brilliant and very knowledgeable so any questions you have they can answer.

My favourite thing in Greece was being able to see and help the turtles then building protection for them in person, its a once in a life time opportunity. Eventhough the smell was hard to cope with exevations were fun to see and do too, seeing what happens to the eggs and nests after they have hatched is very interesting.

I would totally recomend GVI Greece to anyone who loves conservation or science but even if your like me who didn t know anything about conservation but loves sealife and wildlife it's amazing and now its completely changed my life for the better and the way I see things now. Don't hesitate just go for it.