Cheetah Conservation Fund

Dear Prospective Volunteer:

Thank you for inquiring about volunteering with the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF). We appreciate your interest in our programs, as working-guests/volunteers are the backbone of our organization. Because of the growing interest in CCF, we receive many volunteer inquiries. In order to better coordinate your qualifications and talents with our needs, we would appreciate that you follow the application steps detailed on these pages. Our Volunteer Coordinator will be in touch with you to review your qualifications for these programs. You can choose to volunteer as a working guest in Namibia or Kenya. There are also internship programs available for full time students, Masters or Ph.D. students, and zookeepers.

We expect our working-guests/volunteers and student interns to participate in a variety of general tasks and operations of the program, in addition to a focus area. Your focus area will depend on your background, areas of interest and length of stay at CCF. The best qualification for our program is a willingness to help out wherever needed.

We particularly need help with administrative, education and business related functions! We need people who are versatile and can work long hours, seven days a week. We aim to balance the volunteer experience, allowing everyone some exposure to working with cheetahs. However, because our hands-on work with the cheetah can be sporadic, volunteers are required to help with general tasks including:

• Administrative work such as computer work, entering data, record keeping, correspondence, report writing;
• Education/ Outreach consists of teacher training, presentations, and school talks; farmer presentations, attending farm shows; guiding day-visitors to CCF;
• Animal care for resident cheetah, occasional wild cheetahs being held for relocation, and domestic animals;
• Ecosystem research: field work such as game counts, spoor tracking and more;
• Biological/Clinical work such as veterinary care, biomedical sampling, processing blood and faecal samples, necropsies (autopsies);
• Livestock Guardian Dogs: breeding Anatolian Shepherds, raising puppies, follow up with dogs placed on farms.

We are also happy to accept intern in our genetics laboratory. At the CCF genetics laboratory you will be involved in sample collection, inventorying and processing of tissue samples as well as non-invasive samples, DNA extractions and amplification, as well as data analysis. The kind of work that will be done at the time of your visit will depend on the status of the project(s), your experience, and the time you will be able to spend with us in the laboratory. Spaces are limited and restricted to interns who have previous genetics or molecular biology laboratory experience who are able to commit for several months, and who can secure funding to contribute to project expenses. Please contact us at genetics@cheetah.org prior to your internship if you would like to volunteer in the genetics laboratory.

Thank you again for your interest in volunteering with us. We hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Laurie Marker, Ph.D.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Cheetah Conservation Fund