I Paid to Volunteer and it Was a Sham
<p>Ever since I first started backpacking almost two decades ago, I’ve had a passion for volunteering with animals while travelling. This passion has taken me around the world, where I have worked with a variety of creatures — from <a href="https://medium.com/creatures/can-tourists-and-turtles-coexist-on-kuta-beach-fa20a55d55f0" rel="noopener">endangered sea turtles</a> in Bali, Indonesia, to <a href="https://medium.com/creatures/studying-the-soi-dogs-of-bangkok-32404d098597" rel="noopener">stray dogs</a> and <a href="https://nikkisavvides.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">elephants</a> in Thailand and holy cows in India. I’ve been lucky enough to find numerous well run, highly successful volunteer tourism projects that are fully dedicated to animal welfare and conservation, and have seen donations I’ve made to those organisations go directly to animals in need.</p>
<p>However, I also found one project that turned out to be a scam, alerting me to the need to exercise caution when choosing volunteer tourism projects. This particular project was based in the city of Jaipur in northern India, and was advertised enticingly by a large global volunteer tourism agency along the following lines:</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/creatures/i-paid-to-volunteer-and-it-was-a-sham-fcde74ada49b"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>