A love of WILDLIFE

Whatever your stage in life, volunteering can help your CV stand out and give you valuable work experience, while also bringing great personal reward. Andrew Millham tells his story about inspiring young people to engage in wildlife

- Andrew Millham

What do we do with the things we love? We protect them. This is a lesson that I have learnt through volunteering with Essex Wildlife Trust. It is vital to engage children and young people with nature because nature-loving children inevitably grow into nature-loving adults. Over the past year, my goal as a part of Essex Wildlife Trust’s education team has been to engage as many young people as possible with our county’s beautiful wildlife – it has been a lot of fun!

I knew that I wanted to gain practical, outdoors experience alongside my Environmental Science degree, and Essex Wildlife Trust has provided me with the perfect opportunity to do so. In June of last year, I had an informal interview and was quickly invited to help with a Montessori group at Belfairs Woodland Centre. Having not had any prior experience of working with three to four year olds, the session was a baptism of fire. Because the children were so young, it was difficult to ‘teach’ them about our county’s wildlife. However, I quickly discovered that children of that age often have an innate wonder and inextinguishable curiosity for nature and the surrounding world.