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Enjoy Belize while making a positive contribution with your time at Belize Botanic Gardens by becoming a BBG volunteer or intern.
Volunteers
Volunteers of many ages and walks of life have helped us at Belize Botanic Gardens. While we are happy to consider any applicant (that meets the minimum requirements) we are especially looking for volunteers and interns with skills in the following areas:
Horticulture, Landscape Design, Conservation Education, Permaculture, Marketing, Grant Writing and Computer Science/Geography (need assistance with linking map info with database)
Grant Writing
Belize Botanic Gardens needs help with proposal writing. Successful applicants may be able to stay with us for free. Contact us for more information.
Interns
We accept internships at the garden for students that require related work experience complete their degree. If you would like to be an intern at Belize Botanic Gardens your degree should be in a topic relevant to the work we do here such as: ethnobotany, botany, environmental science, education tropical ecology.
Interns generally help out with general garden maintenance as well as participating in a special project. Your project might involve computer work, basic manual labor, horticulural work or a little of each. We try to adapt your jobs to your personal experience and to our "need to get done" basis. Let us know your areas of skill and interest.
More information
Volunteers and interns work a regular week (Monday to Friday), on the weekends we encourage you to go out and tour the area. duPlooy's Jungle Lodge offers some of its tours at a discounted rate to paying BBG volunteers and interns and can sometime let them join scheduled horseback tours from duPlooy's Jungle Lodge at no cost We are located right on the Macal River where there is a beach from where you can swim and sunbathe.
The botanic garden is remotely located, so consider volunteering with a friend.
To join the program we require two work (volunteers) or education (interns) related references. These can be sent by post or email. (if by post please mail to :
Belize Botanic Gardens, PO Box 180, San Ignacio, Cayo, Belize
The cost is $550USD for 4 weeks and includes room and board. A 10% deposit is required to confirm your stay with us. Another option is room only for $350USD for 4 weeks.
Some volunteers/interns want to know why we charge for the volunteer program since they will be working for us. Unfortunately, we have a very limited staff at the garden and have many projects going on, this means that any of our staff members are stretched thin at the best of times. We are happy to have the help and appreciate you work, but it does mean more staff hours to co-ordinate volunteers. We also need to take care of feeding and housing you when we already run the garden with much less funding than we need. We feel the garden is an important project and hope that you feel the same way, so that you feel good about the fact that all of the money for the volunteer program goes directly into running costs of the garden.
Minimum Requirements
To be accepted as a volunteer or intern you must be at 25 years of age (exceptions can be made, if you are a mature person that has traveled before) and speak either English or Spanish fluently. It is helpful if you have travelled to the tropics before or are an experienced traveller.
What to bring
Volunteers should make sure they have adequate health/accident insurance, including Medivac, flashlight, towel, good hiking shoes, lightweight rain gear, swim suit, at least one pair of long pants, something for cool weather, insect repellant, sunscreen and a sun hat
How to Apply
The first step to applying for a volunteer position at Belize Botanic Gardens is to fill out our on-line volunteer application form. Once we recieve the form we will get back to you and go from there.
