I am looking for a Kenyan Coast based charity to work with. We have gap year courses running on the coast from July this year and part of the course involves contributing with time and effort towards a project. We are probably looking at about four or five days, four students, every three months. Any recommendations welcome. Obviously looking for cool houses on the coat, safari lodges (Tsavo East) and the like as well. Over there next week to sort some of this out. I hope this isn't too commercial - we are on to this stuff anyway, just suddenly occurfed to me that the one of you guys may know a good charity...

hi stov
i know of an orphanage near kilifi . the management is in german hands.......is that something which would suit the purpose?
in case you are interested i could search for the link and send it[color=green]

Stov:

Like you, I too was looking into possible charity volunteering for my boss's son who graduates from Duke in May.
Other than Earthwatch I didn't have much luck. What I did hear from several places was that they weren't going to use student volunteers any more. Apparently the students just wanted to go to town and get drunk every night - which was setting a very poor example for the hard-working Kenyan natives they employ full-time. They no longer wanted to depend on volunteers who acted this way.

Thus as a young person please be careful about your behavior. What might be considered "normal" at a university in Europe or the US is frowned upon there. Also, Mombasa is a very deeply religious area. Tank tops, short shorts and being scantily dressed for a female is frowned upon. At the beach at a hotel you are fine dressing that way, but if you go into town you should be covered up.

As for a camp in Tsavo East I heartily recommend Satao Camp (a tented camp). Other camps are Tarhii, Ndololo and Voi Safari Lodge. I have stayed at Satao on eleven occasions and it is awesome. If you are there during the dry season, you will probably see around 1,000 elephants a day at their waterhole right in front of your veranda along with giraffe, buffalo, impala, zebra, kongoni, baboons, monkeys - it is awesome. The camp is owned by Southern Cross Safaris which has an office in Mombasa near the Nyali Bridge. They will pick you up at your hotel and drive you to Satao (about a two hour ride). You can look it up at www.sataocamp.com or write sales@
southerncrosssafaris to set something up.

Hope you don't mind my preaching to you about appropriate behaviors, but I would do the same if my son were volunteering there. You won't regret going. You will learn so much and make a lot of wonderful friends.

Hi Pippa

That would be useful if you don't mind. There will also be a cash attachment so that those students that fall into the useless oaf catageory refered to by Jan will still benefit whoever we team up with. They'll all be going back to their own hotel or lodge every evening so all the charity should see is helful labourers/painters/artists/etc turning up for work for a few days. Ideally I want to try and identify the slkill sets these students have and offer those rather than just a pair of hands.

Jan thanks for the Tsavo camp information - I'll got to Satao next week and check it out.

Original von stov
Hi Pippa

That would be useful if you don't mind. There will also be a cash attachment so that those students that fall into the useless oaf catageory refered to by Jan will still benefit whoever we team up with. They'll all be going back to their own hotel or lodge every evening so all the charity should see is helful labourers/painters/artists/etc turning up for work for a few days. Ideally I want to try and identify the slkill sets these students have and offer those rather than just a pair of hands.

Jan thanks for the Tsavo camp information - I'll got to Satao next week and check it out.

hello stov
here it comes:

http://www.kinderhilfsprojekt-kenya.de/staff/staff.htm

good luck!