A Volunteer's Story: Colleen Kelly

My name is Colleen Kelly and I am from the San Francisco Bay area in California.  I discovered CCF through Earthwatch and decided to volunteer to learn about working for animal conservation: I have learned a lot!

CCF is a dynamic organization filled with people who are fascinated about caring for the cheetahs under their guardianship and saving the wild cheetah.  I worked with experienced, intelligent, creative people.  Everyone is incredibly generous, friendly and welcoming and has a great sense of humor.  It was a pleasure and an honor to spend 2 weeks with them and to get to know them.

The highlights of my time at CCF start with the work I did with the cheetah husbandry team.  Learning hands-on about how to care for cheetahs and working closely with the team to feed them, water them, clean their pens, etc was an energizing experience.  Watching the cheetah run was thrilling – the cheetah is truly a remarkable and beautiful animal. 

Another highlight was participating in the 12-hour waterhole count, which exposed me to so much beauty of the Namibian wildlife.  Even working with the camera trapping photos was a good laugh – and gave me a much-needed respite from the heat.

Overall, being at CCF, learning about how they care for cheetahs and hearing about all the aspects of running a conservation organization on a daily basis has opened my eyes to the challenges they face and how truly inspiring their accomplishments are.

Thank you to all of the staff, interns and volunteers at CCF for a remarkable time.

Volunteer Blog: Andrea Pieroni

Today we present a guest blog entry from one of our Earthwatch Volunteers, Andrea Pieroni. Enjoy!

My name is Andrea Pieroni and I’m from Watt, Switzerland close to our largest city, Zurich.  My country is 20 times smaller than Namibia and has about 42,000km² comparing to Namibia with 812,000km².

I was always interested in wildlife, especially the big cats.  When I was in South Africa in 2006 and had the chance to hold a cheetah, I immediately fell in love with this animal.  When I went home, I started to get more information about cheetahs.  I found the homepage for Earthwatch, which had all the information I needed.  Due to my job (IT consulter) I could not become a volunteer until this year. 

I am happy to be here and escape from the rain and cold in my country.  At CCF, I like to do all the necessary work and not just the work involving the cheetahs.  I enjoy doing whatever is needed to do in order to help run this beautiful place.  Of course I would want to be with the cheetahs all day, but I learned that CCF is more than just cheetahs.

I have worked very hard on camera trap data entry where I have been able to see what animals are doing throughout the day and night.  There are funny pictures too, like a warthog that was smiling into the camera.  I also loved doing the evening game counts where we record all the species we see on the drive.  When I did the waterhole count, I had the chance to observe giraffes: 1 female and 3 younger males drinking from the waterhole.

I look forward to my next project at CCF as well as my next plan in life.  It is hard for me to go back to my cold country and work behind a computer screen all day.  But I still have a dream to come back to this beautiful place and revisit all the wonderful people I have met here.  I especially want to thank Belinda Hans (CCF Administrator) and Brian Badger (CCF Operations Manager) who helped make my dream come true. 

Thank you all and I wish I could stay here longer.

Andrea