Inspire Sri Lanka - www.inspirevolunteer.co.uk

Inspire Sri Lanka provide excellent volunteering projects in the stunning island of Sri Lanka. The main focus is on elephants where you can learn all about these magnificent animals by spending time working with them and their mahout (elephant keeper). You get to wash, feed and generally care for the elephant and also you get taught mahout skills such as how to make your elephant go forward, pick things up, lie down. The mahouts are very good fun to work with and really like to help you. The Inspire team will give you short presentations on various elephant aspects which is very interesting.

You can also spend time working in a local girls orphanage - here you help the children with their English and maths. You can also play games, giving art or music lessons. There are a number of projects that volunteers can get involved in - I helped paint tatty furniture as part of a classroom refurbishment project.

At weekends the Inspire team organise activities for you - they have gone out and found good hotels and deals so you just have to say which trip you want to go on. There was an adventure weekend where we trekked through the jungle, mountain biked to a huge water fall, jumped and slid down rocks and waterfalls and white water rafted. We also went whale watching and surfing, went to the tea country and trekked to worlds end and went to the national park and had some very close encounters with wild elephants.

The Inspire project support the Sri Lankan Wildlife Conservation Society which delivers a number of elephant conservation projects (you can go and spend time with them if you wish) and also financially support the orphanage.

Overall it was great fun and very rewarding, the Inspire team looked after me well and I got a lot more out of the experience then I thought I would.

See their website www.elephantvolunteer.org