Volunteers: South Africa
Chris Hoskins
Hello I’m Chris and I am currently a volunteer on the 2009 South African Great Primate Handshake expedition. After completing my first year of a Film and Video course, at The ATRiuM in Cardiff, I was keen to extend my new skills of video production in my personal time.
On the expedition I will be working alongside three other volunteers within the education team which collaborates elements of video, research, web and interactive media. My main experiences and skills lie in video production therefore I was very keen to broaden myself personally in other fields.
I choose to join the handshake as my passion for travelling, photography and knowledge of digital media could be utilised into creating valuable educational resources that could be posted on The Great Primate Handshake website and used by many visitors as a way to educate themselves with conservation matters and initiatives.
Greg McKinney
Since graduating I have worked as a Video Editor for over two years. I joined the Great Primate Handshake so that I could practice my skills in the field and help create awareness for primate conservation.
Harry Robjent
I am a member of the education team for the Great Primate Handshake South Africa expedition in 2009. I’m currently writing this blog at Klipkop Conservancy outside Johannesburg where we are staying for a couple of days for training and planning the forthcoming expedition. I have just completed a year as a science teacher in a school in South Korea, and it’s exciting to be back in Africa again. Previous to my year in Korea, I spent a year as a volunteer at Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone, where I worked on developing an outreach conservation education program for local schools around the sanctuary. Some of my other experience includes volunteering at another PASA sanctuary in Cameroon and completing a Master’s degree in Primate Conservation, which included a research project in DRC.
I first heard about The Great Primate Handshake at the 2008 PASA management workshop, which was held in Sierra Leone. Two of the founders of the organization, Al and Laurence, were there to introduce the expedition to the managers of the PASA Sanctuaries, and at that time were planning the first Handshake expedition. It seemed to me to be a great idea – to use the team’s digital media and technological skills to help conservation projects in Africa, which often lack access to these skills and the necessary equipment. Since meeting them I was keen to get involved and jumped at the chance to join a trip when the opportunity arose.
My personal reasons for wanting to take part are many. Aside from hoping to contribute in some way to the five projects we are visiting and to conservation in general, I hope to develop my skills for the future. It seemed like a perfect way to get an introduction to web design and digital media, which I can build on subsequently and hopefully put to good use. Of course it’s also a great chance for me to travel somewhere new and see plenty of wildlife, as well as meeting people who share similar interests. Having done an overland tour before I knew it would be great fun.
