Barefoot Conservation Community Projects

The community projects that you will be involved with have been designed by Barefoot Conservation, in conjunction with the local community and government. Through regular meetings between Barefoot Conservation and local stakeholders, including government, elders, women, school groups, fisherman, farmers, and many others, community projects are designed to meet urgent and long-term needs, while fulfilling the goals of the expedition, which include:

• Undertake educational programmes on environmental issues, sustainable fishing techniques and the economic benefits of marine protected areas.
• Increase quality of life and alleviate poverty in local communities.
• Encourage entrepreneurial attitudes to deter from unsustainable destructive activities like shark finning or dynamite fishing.
• Research the effects of Climate Change on coastal communities.

These projects are entirely funded by the fee that volunteers pay, and will cover a wide range of issues that the local community is facing. Some will be urgently needed and others may be more long term educational or quality of life issues. The progress of these projects will be monitored and evaluated over time to demonstrate how they contribute to the greater goals of both the local community and Barefoot Conservation. This will allow us to scale up projects that are having the biggest impact and to re-evaluate and redesign the less effective ones.

These projects will evolve over time as certain needs are met and others arise. As we grow as an organisation, we hope to expand our work from the island of Mansoear into neighbouring communities.

Volunteers could be involved with teaching English to the school children and other community members, river and beach clean ups, our renewable energy programme, climate change research, livelihood diversification workshops, our community medical clinic and providing education on environmental issues and eco-tourism to name but a few.