Could holidaymakers be environmental restoration practitioners too?

Another month has almost passed and the end of another year is close. In a few days, motorways will be thick with traffic as holidaymakers exit cities and towns to properties perched where land meets water.

Thanks to Monica Peters for this great little article on the potential for holidaymakers and tourists to become environmental practitioners.

Here at Volunteer Impact, it is definitely something we’re interested in seeing increase, but what needs to happen for this to become a reality?

Here’s a couple of observations:

• Volunteer activities need to become more accessible — currently it can be quite hard for holidaymakers to find activities they can get involved in for the short time scales they are able to offer.
• Environmental Groups need to change the way they work with volunteers — many grassroots environmental groups can’t afford the time and energy overhead of ‘one off’ volunteers, so prefer to have ‘lifers’ who will turn up week in, week out.
• Opportunities for 3rd party volunteer management — when you take into account health & safety, activity instruction, ecological knowledge, there may be a role for organisations who manage volunteers professionally (such as Conservation Volunteers) to work with environmental restoration groups, and help with the recruitment and management of short-term volunteers from overseas and domestically.
• Volunteers need the 500 year vision & 5 minute plan — short term volunteers need to change expectations about the kind of work they will be involved in. Too many expect to do the ‘glamorous’ work — the species monitoring, tree planting, and other high profile work. Changing how volunteers are introduced can help them see how things like weeding will play a role in a bigger picture, and understand that some long term volunteers might like to do species monitoring too.
• Keeping in touch + seeing projects develop — under-staffed & under-resourced, many environmental volunteering groups don’t ever follow up with once-off volunteers to help them stay connected to the project developments. This often means the memory fades and the potential of word-of-mouth referrals to friends, families & the internet are lost — which could have been a vital stream of recruitment for future volunteers.

Whilst some of these will take time, and a shift in culture, we see the importance of this last piece especially. It can help build an engaged community of local and domestic volunteers over time, and with modern technology and media, the cost is largely (just) people’s time.

What opportunities do you see to engage overseas or domestic holiday makers in environmental restoration work?

Originally published at blog.volunteerimpact.co.