1. Take care of its volunteers - who have usually paid a largish sum of money to be part of the project.

2. Assist its volunteers to meet and work with local people, in the area the project is based.

3. Give its volunteers a sense of making a contribution (other than a money contribution) to the project.

4. Send its volunteers away richer for the experience and with positive feelings for the project. There is a fifth criterion, although there is an element of a "wish list" about this one. The project should:

5. Hope its volunteers will stimulated to engage further with the same, or other, environmental projects as a consequence.

The Orangutan and Pygmy Elephant (Borneo Wildlife Safari), conducted by Way Out Experiences (WOX), from August 27 to September 8, 2008, met all these criteria very successfully

When I joined my fellow volunteers and our guide we started off on the tourist trail, visiting Mount Kinabalu nature park with the botanical garden and Sepilok Orang Utan rehabilitation centre for a feeding. We were quite lucky as the welcoming committee including a couple of young orangutans hanging around the walkway to the feeding platform.

But that's all that was truly touristy. Our nine days at Kinabatangan River were spent collecting wildlife data (species, count, GPS coordinates), planting trees (rewarding, but hard work in the heat of the equatorial sun), helping out on a community project and teaching a class on recycling at the school in Sukau. It has definitely been quite an experience!

I believe we observed 60 species, about 2/3 birds. Feel free to envy me (lots!) for seeing all of the following in the wild (ie the rainforest around the river bank):- mother & baby orangutans, dominant orangutan settling into his nest for the night,- five pygmy elephants with a baby feeding on the grass on the river bank,- numerous boisterous families of long-tail and pig-tail macaques,- curious proboscis monkeys eyeing us from above,- a gibbon perched high up a tree at sunrise and calling a mate (or should I say singing as the call is more like a bird call than what you'd expect from an ape)- baby croc and a 4m crocodile sliding into the waters and heading towards us,- 6 of the 8 species of hornbill, including the rare helmeted hornbill who's call starts with whooping and ends in a ha-ha-ha sort of laugh- all sorts of colourful birds such as kingfishers and trogons, and a few strange ones like the oriental darter which has a neck very much like a snake ... especially when it's the only thing you can see poking out of the water when it's fishing... and water monitors, kites, eagles, pygmy and black squirrels, bats, mangrove snakes, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure I've forgotten a few! And actually you didn't really need to go far from the lodge - we had a resident macaque family who occasionally woke us up by going on the roof or making noise from the trees just outside the windows. Most of the time though, we did need to get on our trusty green boat to go a bit further afield to see wildlife.

So data collection was definitely rewarding. Amazingly we only got caught up in one rain storm but what a storm that was. The sky went black as we turned around a bend and the wall of rain enveloped us. Wall is probably not the right word: the rain was driving at us, feeling very much like pins and needles being stuck in your face. We were soaked through but I managed to keep my camera dry.

The hard work was planting trees. But it was certainly gratifying to see the neat piles of freshly laid leaves around saplings, the rows in the weeds cleared with a machete and ready for planting, and finally the newly planted saplings in a new patch of land given to WOX to improve. It's part of a bigger WWF project to create safe corridors along the river so animals can move to the safety of the primary rainforest. The issue is that there are lots of palm oil plantations in the north of Sabah and around Sandakan (ie along the Kinabatangan River) and the early logging has destroyed some of the connections between safe environments, so various organisations - and fortunately, some palm oil owners - are now replanting stretches of land to address this problem.

Given that a lot of the products we use palm oil - soap, toothpaste, foodstuffs - you can see why there's an economic benefit to the local communities to invest in plantations. But the great thing is that there's now recognition that this needs to be balanced with the needs of the wild animal populations and conservation of the rainforest.

What I perhaps enjoyed the most was the class we did at the school. Groups of volunteers teach the children about protecting the environment and our module was on recycling. We made up three games and a song and it was such a fantastic feeling when the children didn't want to stop playing and when the staff at the lodge sang the refrain of the song! You really feel like you've done good.

I was expecting just a visit to the school, but it was so much better that the visit was more meaningful than just getting to know a few children. I was amazed at how good their English was and am so happy that I got them books for the library because they're so bright and willing to learn.

If you ever want to see Borneo, I would definitely recommend combining it with something like my project. You see and experience so much more!

Having WOX working on site and hand-in-hand with Zoo Taiping is an advantage as they have a series of carefully designed programmes bringing about positive impacts for the zoo, our animals and our zoo keepers. WOX handles volunteers brilliantly and are meticulous in their protocols in Health and Safety standards while dealing with animals, staff and volunteers.

We see our collaboration in animal enrichment and conservation developing positively in the near future. Among the new projects that Zoo Taiping is proudly spearheading through WOX programmes include the documenting of edible plants in and around the zoo, which we aim to complement with planting plots of useful plants for our zoo residents.

We also aim to work together to enhance the role of Zoo Taiping & Night Safari by nurturing conservation education and awareness for members of the public and students.

The tow programmes run by WOX began in October 2006 and they provide constant and direct towards an improved life for animals in captivity as a result of volunteer contribution. WOX has also been instrumental in implementing basic protocols in terms of creating enrichment for animals ranging from the orang-utans, chimpanzees, sunbears, large cats and elephants.

Their continuous effort in creating new enrichment ideas and developing a documented enrichment logbook is of great value to the zoo. We are now developing our partnership to the next level by working together on education programmes where students will be able to contribute on similar levels as volunteers in other fields around the zoo including conservation breeding programmes.