On today’s pod we are excited to welcome Nora Livingstone, the cofounder and volunteer coordinator of Animal Experience International, which is an organization that offers ethical and life-changing trips for students, professionals, and animal lovers to volunteer around the world with organizations that are working ethically and sustainability for animal conservation. Nora is a Nature Canada Woman for Nature and is on the advisory board of the Orangutan Project and the Women’s Advisory Council of JourneyWoman. Nora holds FEMA certifications for volunteering, leadership, and deployment during natural disasters, and has volunteered with animals all over the world. This episode discusses some of the ethics around volunteering with animals and pitfalls to look out for as you are looking at your own potential volunteering experience, as well as the five freedoms of animal welfare and how those fit into the Fair Trade Learning Standards for the Gap Year Association.
You can learn more about Animal Experience International online at https://www.animalexperienceinternational.com/.
Specifically, you can reference Animal Experience International’s extensive Code of Ethics HERE.
Check out Nora’s article on the Gap Year Association blog! Ethical Volunteering with Animals on Gap Year Experiences
“We were trying to decolonize travel. We were trying to think more about equity, think more about entitlement, and travel and where its roots really are in white supremacy and in entitlement.” – Nora Livingstone
“When we look at travel ethics, if we think about it through a lens of consent it’s a really accessible way. You may not know why you think something is unethical, why something doesn’t feel good, but you know that it doesn’t.” – Nora Livingstone
You can find Nora and the folks at Animal Experience International on Instagram @animalinternational or online at www.animalexperienceinternational.com