Volunteer
WVS now supports over
340
different animal welfare charities all over the world and you can experience a trip of a lifetime by volunteering.
Have a look through the list of WVS Trips that are currently available.
Non-Vet volunteers:
The goals of WVS are to help our associated organisations on a sustainable basis for the long term. We only start sending teams to charities if we are confident we can follow them up with more resources in the future and assisting community education programmes is a core part of what many of our non-vet volunteers do on the trips.
You don’t need to be a brilliant vet or vet nurse to make a real difference to the charities we help, you need to just care passionately about what they are trying to do and have plenty of enthusiasm and energy to support them in the best way you can. This is why we ask for a brief description of your skills and experience when you join WVS – it helps us try to match up our teams and allows us to try to twist the arms of the volunteers in to joining specific charities that have specific needs. For example, we’d love to send some schoolteachers to Uganda and Peru, a builder to Thailand and a farrier to Gambia and the list goes on and on!
There is a role for everyone willing, enthusiastic and determined to make a difference – whether it is catching feral cats, recording statistics, managing publicity campaigns or simply making tea! We can only do it as a team and that means relying on each other to get the job done well and make sure the animals get the best care possible.
Vet and Vet Nurse Volunteers:
No matter what country you live in, we need your help. Simple as that. If you can give us a week or two we can give you an adventure of a lifetime. The veterinary community is international, so our teams and work has to be as well. If you particularly want to help a charity that isn’t on the registered trip list, let us know and we’ll do our best to work something out. We can support you with medicines and equipment and if you need them – other team members. The support we give has to be on a long term basis to help the charity, so if you do go on a trip with us, we will ensure there is a follow up to build on what you have achieved.
We tailor our vet and vet nurse teams to ensure there is a balance of experience. Feral animals probably need better surgery than privately owned ones because they don’t get the re-checks or have the perfect operating theatre to visit. Although we very much welcome vet students on the teams, we do this only on the trips where they can be very closely supervised and make sure that the welfare of the animals isn’t compromised.
If you are a vet who has worked for three years in a large animal practice and wants to get back into small animal work – that is great, but let us know. We will make sure you go on a team with experienced small animal vets who can back you up and help you get back into it. Please don’t volunteer as the only vet on a team going to neuter 200 dogs on an intensive neutering campaign – no one wins in that situation and that is why we check up on your experience and ask you respectfully what you can do.
As a guide – small animal vets leading a team should be very confident in being able to spay a bitch within 30mins, they will have no less that 3yrs experience although we prefer 5 and should be happy to support and direct the team in making decisions and clinical policies. We don’t have fixed policies with regards particular cases – we work with and for our associated charities so we help them with constructive advice and then we respect their decision about specific cases that are ultimately under their care.
Good vet nurses are absolutely essential to any hardcore team we send out. We take a balance of qualified and non-qualified but always do our utmost to make sure we include at least one qualified and experienced nurse in every team. Please volunteer – these animals really do need looking out for and we promise you your nursing skills will be utilised to the max!
Vet Students:
The energy and enthusiasm vet students can give to a team is fantastic. We love the idealism they bring to a trip and they get to see what vetting can be like in extreme places! We do allow vet students to gain experience with our teams but only on certain trips where the ratio of vets is sufficient to ensure they never operate without direct supervision and no harm can come to an animal. Feral animals are not for practising – they need the very best care because it is often the only time they will ever get to see a vet and the only chance they have to be treated/neutered or vaccinated. If you would like to come on a trip, please contact us and we can let you know which trips will be suitable.
To view the full details of a particular trip, you will need to become a member.
A WVS volunteer trip will give you more than just photo’s to take away
