Simabo works with the street animals of São Vicente, Cape Verde. We rescue and treat injured animals, run neutering and deworming campaigns across the island, and run education sessions in the community. Our organisation has four sites: a clinic, a dog shelter, a volunteers' house, and a hostel for backpackers that also houses the cat shelter.
The hostel and our membership fees cover part of our running costs. Everything they do not cover is paid for by donations from abroad, which means there is always fundraising and communication work to do, and that people give to what they can see.
That is the problem we need you for. Everyone here shoots: the animal savers with their phones between rescues, the volunteers at the shelter, the vets when they remember. It keeps us going, but it is not the same as work made by someone who knows what they are doing. We have never had enough of that, and it shows in what we can publish and in what we can raise.
**What we are short of.** We will tell you what is running during your stay and what we most need, so that you will know where things are. Any of these would be worth your time:
- *One animal, followed* from the street or the clinic through treatment to recovery. What we most want and least manage to get
- *A neutering campaign* a day in a village, from setting up to the last animal going home
- *Before and after* animals on the day they arrived, and the same animals once they had recovered
- *The adoption portraits* every animal currently waiting for a home, to one consistent standard. Unglamorous, and the most useful thing anyone has ever done for our adoptions
- *The four sites* clinic, dog shelter, cat shelter and hostel, covered properly. What we use to introduce ourselves to donors and future volunteers
**But none of this is an assignment.** You are the one with the eye, and you are seeing this place with fresh eyes that none of us have any more. If you find a better story than anything on that list, follow it, we would rather have the thing you saw than the thing we asked for.
**What we ask at the end** is not a hard drive of everything you shot. It is material we can use: culled, corrected, named and described, with the best of it selected and ready to publish. That last part is what makes the difference between leaving us footage and leaving us work.
**And one finished piece.** Whatever else you shoot, we ask every photographer and videomaker to leave one thing we can publish as it stands: a blog article for example about something you documented, illustrated with your own photographs, or a short edited video. You choose which, with us, according to what you do best, and if writing is not your trade, our Communication Team will work on the text with you. this kind of piece will have your name on it, to show people afterwards.
**And everything else you shoot.** Alongside the project, keep photographing and filming everyday life here: the clinic, the shelter, the staff at work, the animals waiting. That material goes into our content library and gets used for years.
**How the work is organised.** You work one shift a day: morning from 8 to 13, or afternoon from 13 to 18. When you are not out collecting material, we ask you to be at the office or the hostel during your shift, backing up, editing, and available for whatever comes up.
**What to bring.** We provide no equipment of any kind. Bring your own: camera bodies and lenses or your video kit, audio, a laptop you can edit on, memory cards, spare batteries, chargers. Bring more storage than you think you need. Dust, heat and salt air are hard on gear, so bring what protects it.
**Who we are looking for.** Someone who has done this before and can show us: send a portfolio or a showreel with your application. The help we need varies with your skills, so we are looking for a self-starter with a very high degree of motivation. You will have all the support you need, a contact on the ground for your whole stay, our Communication Team behind you, and a list of what we are short of whenever you want a starting point, but the work itself is yours to carry: the choices, the shooting and the finishing. Good English.
You should be comfortable around animals in distress and in a working clinic: you will see injured animals, surgery, and sometimes animals that do not survive. And you should be willing to accept our rules on privacy, consent and the external use of material. These apply to everything photographed or filmed as part of Simabô’s activities, including material involving children, patients, staff and donors.
Once your application is accepted, we send you our communication handbook before you travel.
**Health.** No vaccinations are required or recommended for Cape Verde, and there is no rabies here.
