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Perfect 4.63rating (37)

Animal Sanctuary General Helper

location
2 - 12 weeks  ·  Age 18 - 50+
Verified

Complete your reservation as soon as possible. This project fills up quickly and is already booked on certain dates.


Highlights

  • Immerse yourself in the breathtaking beauty of South Tenerife, and create lasting memories while living in a sustainable community!
  • Experience the pure joy of caring for guinea pigs, sheep, birds, pigs and so many more animals together with our other volunteers!
  • Join a meaningful cause as we come together to rescue and rehabilitate animals in need, offering them a second chance at a happy and fulfilling life!

Highlights

  • Immerse yourself in the breathtaking beauty of South Tenerife, and create lasting memories while living in a sustainable community!
  • Experience the pure joy of caring for guinea pigs, sheep, birds, pigs and so many more animals together with our other volunteers!
  • Join a meaningful cause as we come together to rescue and rehabilitate animals in need, offering them a second chance at a happy and fulfilling life!
  • Forge connections with fellow volunteers who share your passion for animal welfare, forming lifelong friendships that span across cultures and continents!
  • Choose your own unique accommodation!

  • You don't have to pay anything yet

    Especially good for

    Age 18+
    Singles
    Couples
    50+

    About the program

    Getting involved in many different things. E.g.preparing meals for the small animals, assisting in giving the appropriate care, building tasks, cooking or walking dogs.

    Come and join our fun and fast paced Small Animal team on our Eco-sanctuary, where you will be learning how to care for a wide range of different animals, understanding their specific dietary requirements and how to connect with them, and living as part of vibrant community all dedicated to ...

    About the program

    Come and join our fun and fast paced Small Animal team on our Eco-sanctuary, where you will be learning how to care for a wide range of different animals, understanding their specific dietary requirements and how to connect with them, and living as part of vibrant community all dedicated to sustainable living and animal welfare. Please be aware 'Small Animals' is the term that we use to describe any animals on our sanctuary that are not horses or donkeys, and some of them are definitely not small! 

    Volunteering is a fun and hands on way to immerse yourself in a field of interest, invest in an area you want to pursue for study or simply a way to give back.

    As a volunteer with us you will spend your days involved all all different ways of providing care and support for our rescue animals, from bottle feeding baby goats to giving appropriate medicine to the animals that need it, or simply exercising some of our beautiful doggies with a walk around the barranca.

    You will be working with the small animals in the day, and relaxing in our beautiful luxury Mongolian yurt by the evening, with your own private kitchen, bathroom and living space to enjoy.

    We maintain a healthy balance between working, learning and playing, and as all of our animals have been rescued or found abandoned due to abuse or neglect, our main focus is on rehabilitation for carefully vetted re-adoption, or they are put into retirement to live their lives to the very best they can, being cared for by our volunteers in peace.

    You are not just here to "work" with animals, you are here to learn about a beautiful way of caring for every unique animal.

    About Us

    We started as a couple with a dream to create a small self-sufficient Eco Horse and Animal Sanctuary in 2018. We are now a registered charity with over 6500 acres, volunteers from all over the world, and an even bigger 'finca' family of over 400 animals, including 30 horses and 11 donkeys.

    • *Our Mission; To give a voice to animals who cannot speak for themselves, and a safe place in a sustainable eco-sanctuary providing education and collaboration with like minded associations to change the future of animal welfare forever.
    • *Our Vision; To see animals living species appropriate lives, relaxed and free, no longer used, abused or exploited for recreational pleasure.
    • *Our Values; To always make decisions that align with our mission, putting the needs of our animals first. Fighting for animal rights and law reform, and educating and inspiring others to join the fight with us.

    We first opened as a horse charity, until we saw how greatly we were needed by many other animals on the Island, so we started to open our doors to a wide and wonderful variety of abandoned pets, stray cats and dogs, and rescued farm animals, from goats, to pigs, to Guinea pigs, to bearded dragons! 

    Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, and our ENTIRE sanctuary (or 'finca') is built from clay, scrap wood and metal, and waste material. We eat "freegan" as all of our food comes from supermarket and farm waste, and have an incredible kitchen team who turns all that "waste" into incredible meals for us twice a day. We also boast some amazing regenerative systems to keep us sustainable, such as our solar, wind turbines and water systems. We turn all of our food waste to compost, and even use all of our horse manure to heat the hot water pipes for our showers, we're like a sustainability power house!

    Our project is beautiful but hard work, we get the balance of working as a team to make it happen but enjoying the experience of back to basic living. As we live in a community based on animal welfare and sustainable living you must be passionate about this and happy to live in a sustainable way without luxuries. We rely on animal and nature lovers to add their own beautiful ideas into this project, help us to grow and expand and leave behind their personal touch and legacy to keep the dream alive for many years to come.

    We have up to 40 amazing volunteers coming and going from here at any one time, who all speak a great variety of languages, but to keep things simple we all communicate together for work in English. The age range can vary, our youngest volunteer was little Leo aged 8, at the same time as Roberto our 72 year old gardener!

    Working with the small animals is often physically hard and although we welcome people from all ranges of professional or non-professional backgrounds, a hard-working attitude will take you further here than a lot of previous experience that you might have. Tenerife Horse Rescue celebrates diversity from all areas, so please let us know before booking if you have specific needs or disabilities so we can discuss the possibilities and come to a conclusion that is inclusive but also guarantees everyone’s safety.

    Community Living

    We have an on-boarding video "How to Finca" for new volunteers to watch when they arrive here which explains our most important community rules. Most of these are common sense, but many that are in line with our morals connected to sustainable living.

    To use as an example, every responsible adult understands that it's important to clean up after themselves, but not everyone is used to not throwing toilet paper down the toilet. We have a very sensitive septic system which is damaged by toilet paper and towels, so we provide bins to use in the bathroom which are changed daily. Following these important rules such as this are essential to keeping our community running smoothly; every hour a volunteer needs to spend unclogging the drains with toilet paper is another hour wasted that can be used to care for our animals, or build our sanctuary. You might find it a bit rustic living in such a way to start, but we are all here to support each other and make your transition in as smooth as possible.

    Cooking

    Our secret weapon comes in the form of our "freegan" diet and life style! We have an agreement with several super markets on the Island where we collect their 'waste' food every day (in amazing condition) and take it back to turn it into incredible meals for our hard working volunteers! We separate the food 3 ways; the best for the volunteers to our pantry and our kitchen, the second best food goes to our animals, and the rest goes to our compost to be eventually made into bags to sell, very sustainable! We are also a registered food bank on the Island so we send a lot of food to impoverished families every day. There are two meals prepared for you per day, breakfast at 11am and lunch at 14:30. We make a lot of vegetarian and vegan food that can be eaten by all, but all diets are accepted on the finca, as long as everyone is respectful of each other views. You are then allowed to use any food that we have here from either the fridge or the pantry to cook/consume at any time, provided that there isn't a name on it. A lot of the time we encourage group cooking and there are two nights a week where we have our community dinner.

    Language

    On the finca we communicate with each other in English for work so that everyone can always understand. However there are many different languages being spoken here and we encourage each other to practise if you feel comfortable :) There are parts of the Island where English is a lot more commonly spoken, but it's always nice to have a little bit of basics before you come to feel more comfortable and make a bit of an effort with the locals!



    Typical day

    The typical working hours on the finca for the small animal team are a morning shift from 8.30am-11am when we have a half an hour breakfast. Then an afternoon shift from 11:30 to 14:30 when we meet together for lunch. Occasionally there may be other tasks that you can participate in during the ...

    Typical day

    The typical working hours on the finca for the small animal team are a morning shift from 8.30am-11am when we have a half an hour breakfast. Then an afternoon shift from 11:30 to 14:30 when we meet together for lunch. Occasionally there may be other tasks that you can participate in during the evening if you would like, and you are always encouraged to spend as much time as you want with the animals at any time that works for you!

    The average day can completely differ from one day to the next, as you may be caught up welcoming an emergency arrival or spend hours trying to burp a bloated sheep! But here is an example of some of the tasks that have to be completed every day.

    * Collect older food from kitchen and storage room for animal use
    * Chop and prepare appropriate food for all animals
    * Change water for all and clean water bowls
    * Changing old food and empty dirty bedding into compost
    * Clean up any animal poop from around the sanctuary
    * Walk and exercise the dogs that need it 
    * Administer medicine to the animals that need it
    * Sort food from farm waste for animals
    * Monitor health (Nails, grooming, bathing etc when necessary)
    * Clean and change feeding bowls/buckets

    Whilst we know that we have around 350 animals on our sanctuary we can never be totally sure as our poultry are essentially free roaming! As a basic list, you will be looking after goats, cats, dogs, chickens, turtles, tortoises, guinea-pigs, rabbits, budgies, love birds, parrots, a bearded dragon, pigs sheep, geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, and ferrets to name a few! 


    Free-time activities

    There are many beautiful things you can do on the Island of Tenerife in your free time.


    Many of our volunteers like to go to the beach, visit the local towns or go hiking to some of the incredible hikes on the Island. You can take a bus to pretty much anywhere here, and the prices are very reasonable ...

    Free-time activities

    There are many beautiful things you can do on the Island of Tenerife in your free time.


    Many of our volunteers like to go to the beach, visit the local towns or go hiking to some of the incredible hikes on the Island. You can take a bus to pretty much anywhere here, and the prices are very reasonable for travel, or taking a beer in one of the little restaurants by the sea. Tenerife is bursting all year round with fun things to do and places to go, there will always be someone on hand at the finca who can give you the low down on the best places to go, with the insider knowledge!

    You have the beautiful town of El Medano on our door step, the gorgeous Montana Roja to climb, paddle boarding, scuba diving! El Medano is also the European capital of wind surfing, with many amazing competitions that you can visit and watch with a jug on Sangria from one of the beautiful local bars.

    You can hop on a bus and get to the capital city, Santa Cruz, a city dazzling with culture and many beautiful restaurants and museums, or venture over to Puerto De La Cruz to experience their world famous Botanical Gardens, and the chic night life!

    Even on the finca, we love to organise things together, if it's trips to the beach, football games, going to raves (off-site from the sanctuary) yoga meetings, group dinners, the list is endless when you have a big finca family together :)

    However we do like to point out that this is NOT a party place, whilst we can all enjoy socialising and having a couple of drinks over the weekend outside of work hours we do not tolerate any behaviour which can jeopardise the safety and mental state of our animals, or any actions which threaten the reputation of the sanctuary. We are well known and loved on the Island, and the volunteers are a representation of ourselves and the image we want to create. 

    We also have a ZERO tolerance policy for any actions that threaten the safety and well being of any person here, for example; racism, sexism, domestic violence, aggression and theft. It should also go without saying that any negative behaviour towards the animals will not be tolerated.

    If your free-time activity doesn't violate any of those rules then you are free to do whatever you please, and the sky is the limit! :) 


    Requirements

    Requirements

    Minimum Age: 18 years

    In order to join the program you need to be at least 18 years old on the program start date. There might be exemptions if you can provide the permission of your legal guardian(s) or if your are accompanied by your parents.

    Language Skills

    You need to speak English (basic level)

    Nationality Restrictions

    No restrictions. Helping hands from all over the world are welcome.

    Other Skills

    Passion for animals! That's the only necessary skill we are searching for.

    Time Commitment

    Your helping hand will be required on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 08:30 - 14:30

    What's Included

    What's Included

    On-site Services

    The prices that are mentioned above are the prices for the three budget accommodations: the Cupcake House, the Green Van,  Caravan of Joy, Hobbit House and the Caravan. For the Mongolian Yurt, the Casa Mirador, Donkey Den and the Chalet we ask different prices as mentioned below. The fees include two cooked meals a day (breakfast and lunch) from Monday to friday for every accommodations.

    Free access to our food storage and kitchen, so you can cook your own meals.

    Plus a free pick-up/drop-off to Tenerife South Airport between 8.00 and 20.00.

    Bedsheets and towels will be provided!

    Airport Pickup at Tenerife South Airport

    We offer a free pick-up/drop-off from the Tenerife South Airport. If you need to be picked up at the Tenerife North Airport you will have to pay an extra fee.

    Accommodation

    STANDARD SOLUTIONS

    The Cupcake House
    Stay in this quirky, eco-friendly retreat with sea views, built by volunteers from natural and recycled materials. Your roommate? Billie the cat—cute, friendly, and the true queen of this home! Enjoy private accommodation with a shared community vibe, including communal meals and facilities.

    The Glass Bottle Casa
    Once a food storage room, this charming space was built with clay and recycled glass bottles by volunteers. It’s now a cute, rustic retreat near the old kitchen—a quiet yet sociable spot to unwind. Enjoy furry cat companions, easy access to amenities, and a stroll to the horse paddocks and small animal areas.

    Casa De Coo-Coo
    A tiny and cozy space in the heart of our Animal Sanctuary. Close to the sound of the birds, toilets, old kitchen and a quiet comfy area

    The Beach Hut

    New beach.style cozy accomodation with an incredible view. CLose to the kitchen, toilet and showers.

    The Green Van
    Once home to horse tack, this quirky 1969 van still bears messages from past volunteers and even a steering wheel by the bed! It’s a one-of-a-kind stay near the old kitchen, offering a sociable yet peaceful vibe. 

    The Caravan of Joy
    Donated by a long-standing volunteer, Joy Caravan lives up to its name, bringing happiness to all who stay. Perched on the edge of our vibrant new area, it offers privacy with stunning ravine views from a secluded porch, complete with a dining area and sun lounger. 

    The Hobbit House
    Handcrafted by volunteers with sandbags filled from the finca’s earth, this unique stay offers a deep connection to nature. Nestled on the edge of our developing community area, enjoy incredible ravine views, a private seating area, and sun lounger.


    PREMIUM SOLUTIONS

    The Chalet
    Situated on the edge of our vibrant community area, this private escape offers stunning ravine views from your secluded porch, complete with a dining area and sun lounger. Enjoy a private kitchenette, shower, and compost toilet.

    The Donkey Den
    Tucked away in nature, surrounded by horses, donkeys, and sheep, this peaceful retreat offers privacy while still being close to the heart of the sanctuary. Built with recycled doors, it features a kitchenette, compost toilet, and bathroom.

    The Chiaravan
    A new caravan-style stay with one of the most amazing view of the finca.


    DELUXE SOLUTION

    The Yurt
    Nestled in a private sanctuary area, this handcrafted yurt offers a double bed, private bathroom, kitchenette, lounge, and terrace. Perfect for families or friends, it’s serene, secluded, and stunning—our finca’s crown jewel.

    The Cave House
    Nestled by the goat enclosure & home to Pepito the cat, this cozy retreat features a private bathroom, kitchen, and lounge. Handcrafted with love, its stone and tile design reflects our finca’s creative spirit.

    Food & Beverages

    We are a freegan community. Which means we get free "waste" food from stores that they are not able to sell anymore. A big amount of this food is still perfect for consumption. We have a lovely kitchen team that cooks two hot meals a day for all the volunteers. This includes breakfast and lunch. In the evening you can cook yourself  a meal in our community kitchens. You can use food from our own food storage to prepare a meal.

    Internet Access

    Limited access at the project site
    You don't have to pay anything yet

    What's NOT included?

    What's NOT included?

    Flight Tickets

    The nearest airport is Tenerife South Airport (TFS) in Tenerife. We assist you to find cheap flights to Spain. FIND CHEAP FLIGHTS

    Travel Insurance

    Going abroad is an adventure and it is always best to be prepared. Sudden illness or injury, cancellation or theft - a travel insurance for Spain provides security and is a plus to have. GET A QUOTE

    Vaccines

    If you are intending to volunteer in Spain you should seek medical advice before starting your social journey. Check your required vaccinations for Spain. VACCINE CHECKER

    Details on arrival

    As Tenerife is known as the land of eternal spring, we have beautiful weather all year round, and even our winter times can be busy! You are encouraged to contact us to talk further about the best times to come, however we are open to take volunteers all year round. Wanna stay longer then 4 weeks? Then just let us know and we will make you a special offer!

    We have different accommodations with different prices. When sending in your application you can specify which accommodation you would prefer!

    Availability
    Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

    Program fees

    2 weeks (min. stay) 714€
    3 weeks 1,071€
    12 weeks (max. stay) 4,284€
    Average fees 357€/week

    Program fees

    357€ per week 2 - 12 weeks Age 18 - 50+

    Payment methods

    Visa Master Card Maestro American Express PayPal

    NO CREDIT CARD FEES


    Duration

    2 - 12 weeks

    Deposit

    The deposit is simply to reserve your volunteer placement. Payments are handled by PayPal, our trusted global payment provider. If you don't have a PayPal account, you can also pay using a credit card.


    Final Payment

    Your final payment will be agreed with Tenerife Horse Rescue during the application process. Common solutions are either via bank transfer or a cash payment at the project site.

    You don't have to pay anything yet

    4.63
    37 reviews

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    Location

    Europe > Southern Europe > Spain > Santa Cruz De Tenerife

    Meet your project coordinator

    Mandy
    37
    reviews
    4.63
    Perfect
    2018
    Founded

    Verified by Volunteer World

      Moderate response rate
    Spoken languages: Spanish, Italian, English
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    Travel dates

    1. - 1. Jan 1

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