Hello, this summer I am volunteering in Thailand, working with elephants!

For 4 weeks I will be based in the a small, remote village a couple of hours away fro Chiang Mai, called Huay Pakoot. The reason I’ll be there is because I have volunteered to help a locally driven project with rehabilitating elephants. Whilst I’m there I’ll be involved in the care and rehabilitation of elephants rescued from tourist attractions and circus acts. The experience with the elephants is as hands-off as possible but still enough for the elephants to heal. I will be doing a routinely health checks (with experts) with the elephants as well as observational hikes with them. The Asian elephant population has declined rapidly to being as low as 35,000 elephants, only 1,000-2,000 in Thailand, adding them to the endangered species list.

The programme i will be working within aims to create a lomg term natural habitat making the rehabilitated elephants into a semi-wild herd with the supervision of experts and the local community.

As for my time away from the elephants, I will be helping in the local community teaching English to children, women’s English class’s and Monks in the local temple. GVI aims to create projects that a locally driven by creating a u=sustainable life for these communities in regards to teaching them English and introducing jobs that were not available before - they aim to reduce poverty in the small villages.

As you can imagine the elephants are expensive animals to take care of which is why I’m asking for any donations - big or small! The work being done will make the biggest difference to these elephants lives and will hopefully help the population grow just a little bit. Not only the elephants lives will be drastically changed for the better but also the community in Huay Pakoot to help them develop better lives .

Thank you so much!

Ash Xxx :)