The conservation and community project gives volunteers the special opportunity to work with community development, reforestation and help improve the infrastructure of local schools.

The mission of Great Aves (the charity of which You Volunteer is a part of), is to improve education in rural areas. We see this as not just being confined to the classrooms for local students, but an education process for the communities moving from one way of life to another.

We take great care not to purely donate resources, put to have the local communities lead projects and contribute to our activities. By working with the local communities, rather than against or inspite of (without their involvement), the volunteers work is much more effective.

To achieve our goal of improving education in rurual areas, and conserving the Amazon in the process, the project is split into three areas. Volunteers work with; local communities helping to increase knowledge of available healthcare and sanatised living, with reforestation and conservation, and in the schools helping to improve sports and teaching facilities. The volunteers week be divided into these three areas. Volunteers work for around 5 hours each day, and their time equally split between indoor and outdoor activities. Work starts at 9am and finishes at 4pm with a 2 hour lunch

Community Development
Are interpretation and focus of community development is through health and sanitised living. Our role is not to have the technical knowledge required to treat medical problems, but to let communities know that they are available and help them access necessary healthcare. We also believe in prevention, and have set about installing water filtration systems at the schools, which we hope to implement in community homes. Volunteers focus their work on helping to indentify issues that need addressing, research and implement systems, such as the water filtration project, and help raise funds to see projects through to completion.

Reforestation and sustainable agriculture
Volunteers work on the complete reforestation process from removal of non-native species to planting native trees and plants. Our primary area of focus is the land based around the volunteer house, which, like much of the Amazon, has been deforested for cattle grazing. The land has been bought for conservation, and we are now setting about the task of reforesting it.

Improving school sports and teaching facilities.
Alongside the work being done by the Arajuno Road Project (which teaches in the schools where the community project is based), volunteers have the opporunity to develop the school facilities, from installing water systems for bathrooms and kitchens, have available drinking water, create play areas, building store rooms other buildings, maintaining the current school buildings and grounds, developing school agricultural projects, and finding funding for sports, art, music, computing and general teaching equipment. Volunteers help select projects, and work through all or parts of the process, from design to fundraising and impletmentaion.