What to expect
After arriving in Nadi in the West of Fiji, you will be met by Global Vision International field staff who will accompany you on your journey to the Yasawa’s and your new tropical island home.
After an overnight stay in Suva where you will get to meet your fellow volunteers, your diving adventure begins. The GVI local team will teach you about marine life and diving.
Aside from the excitement of learning to dive in Fiji, you will be given a series of presentations, workshops, point-out snorkels and dives and other training that will enable you to learn the survey methods and species identification skills that you need to help us collect data to establish marine protected areas in partnership with local communities.
A typical day on the island starts with breakfast, followed by a science presentation or workshop, then your dive. You will be spending a lot of time in the warm waters of the area on point-out dives, survey dives or recreational dives just for fun every Saturday! Volunteers are guaranteed one dive a day, weather permitting, and we split the group into two dive teams when volunteer numbers require it. By the time the second group of volunteers come back from their dive your lunch is ready and it’s a good time to talk about what you saw and learned about that morning. At the end of the two to three week training period, there is plenty of free time in the afternoons to relax and enjoy the beautiful environment, read a book or write an aerogramme home. In addition, one afternoon per week is reserved to visit the local schools and run educational projects with the children.
Evenings are for socialising with your fellow volunteers, lying back on the sand and to enjoy the stars or maybe having a bonfire and a few bowls of kava. One evening per week you might watch documentaries relating to the marine environment and conservation issues in our cinema. Saturday evenings the team and the volunteers sometimes plan games or a themed party, so we rely on your input and ideas to keep us all entertained! On average, if you stay for six weeks you will complete between 30 to 40 dives and you will be diving every day apart from Sunday. We wish to make it very clear though that the main purpose of our project is to gather useful data for the community, so if you are looking for a resort dive holiday, gourmet food or hotel style accommodation then please do not contact us. We provide remote location conservation expeditions where volunteers are expected to be open minded, adventurous, pro-active and willing to take the rough with the smooth in order to have the best experience possible.
GVI encourages applications from people who want to make a contribution to genuine, long-term conservation. A positive attitude is vital and a willingness to work as part of our diverse team will ensure that you get the maximum benefit from this experience. You will need to bring three things with you to Fiji: A sense of adventure, a sense of humour and patience! Our staff are here because they have a passion and enthusiasm for conservation in Fiji and GVI expects its volunteers to fully participate to further the goals of the project, come rain or shine.
There is always something happening with this dynamic and adaptive project and you are invited to make your mark on the development and the implementation of GVIs conservation goals. GVI encourages individual ideas from volunteers; some of the best new developments of overseas conservation project have come from past volunteers.
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