Making special memories through volunteering
- jobrowne1
- Sep 19, 2025
- 4 min read
Vets and RVNs are being invited to apply for funding from VetPartners to undertake clinical work with animal charities around the world.
As well as being an experience of a lifetime, volunteering is a brilliant way to boost your clinical skills while helping animals in need.
Emily Philpot, head nurse at Uplands Way Vets, spent a week volunteering with the Southern Zanzibar Veterinary Clinic in East Africa, which she says is a trip she’ll never forget…
Emily Philpot loves travelling and experiencing different cultures and she’s always dreamed of being able to visit a new country while helping improve animal welfare at the same time. This summer, she was able to achieve her goal after applying for a grant from VetPartners to volunteer overseas.
Emily chose to travel to a remote part of the world and flew 6,500 miles to Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of East Africa, to support a project that improves the welfare of stray cats through a neutering and vaccination programme.
She was able to use the skills she’s gained during 10 years in veterinary nursing to assist with surgery and influence cat welfare by sharing some of the techniques used in practice back home in Norfolk to reduce feline stress.
Always keen to do what she can to support the vets and nurses of the future, Emily was also able to use her volunteering experience to pass on tips and advice to students from the University of Glasgow that she was working alongside, and put forward suggestions to help the permanent team members at the clinic.
She said working in a remote island community with limited facilities and medications was a world away from caring for pets at Uplands Way, but it was the experience of a lifetime.
Emily said: “It was amazing and so rewarding to be able to use my nursing skills to help make a difference to animal welfare and to support a project that does such worthwhile work to help cats living wild on the island.
“During my stay, I worked with the clinic team and other volunteers to catch feral cats using nets, so they could be transported to the clinic to be neutered, vaccinated against rabies and given flea treatments and wormers. We also saw some dogs and treated injured birds and ducks that were brought to the clinic.
“It was very different to work somewhere with limited resources and in less-than-ideal conditions, but it challenges you to adapt your skills and think on your feet because you sometimes need to come up with alternative ways of delivering care to patients.
“As well as volunteering my hands-on clinical skills, I also found I could be useful by suggesting practical ways to help the clinic run more efficiently and make things easier for team members and other volunteers. I talked to them about things we use in practice, such as suggesting they introduced a whiteboard to list all patients and the treatments they needed.
“I was also able to use my knowledge of behaviour to show everyone how to handle cats and dogs to help keep them as calm as possible and reduce their fears. This wasn’t easy because the animals were wild and they didn’t understand that we were trying to help them, but even little changes can help make such a difference to in-patient care.”
As well as a grant of £1,500/€1,800, VetPartners provides travel insurance and one week’s paid leave for vets and RVNs to volunteer overseas.
Emily does not hesitate to recommend volunteering to her colleagues within VetPartners, and she is hoping that in the future she can make another trip that will focus on helping wildlife.
She added: “Through volunteering you will visit amazing new places, learn new skills and have an experience you’ll remember for a lifetime. You will also meet some incredible people and on my trip I made new friends that I’m planning to keep in touch with – I’m already planning a visit to Glasgow to meet up with the students I was volunteering with.
“If you are going on a volunteering trip, my best tip is to try and get in contact with the people who will be there with you, so you have an idea of who you’ll be working with. I volunteered through Worldwide Vets and they added me to a Whatsapp group, so everyone could get to know each other beforehand. It was less daunting than everyone being total strangers when I arrived.
“My VetPartners grant covered a week of volunteering and I extended the trip at my own expense to go on a safari in the Serengeti, which was amazing. However, if I do volunteer again I would consider volunteering for two weeks. One week can be perfect for some people, but it took me a couple of days to get into the swing of things and find my way round the clinic. A second week would mean I could see more cases through to the end, which I would find personally rewarding and I think the continuity of care would be good for the patients, too.”
Vets and RVNs who have worked for VetPartners for at least 12 months can apply for a grant to volunteer overseas.
Applications open on Wednesday 1st October and close at 11.59pm on Friday 31st October.
Successful applicants receive a week of paid leave for the volunteering and will be covered by VetPartners' travel insurance policy.
Subject to approval from practice management, successful applicants may spend longer than a week overseas (volunteering or holiday travel) but must make up the additional time from their annual leave or take unpaid leave.
Grants of £1,500/€1,800 are available, with any additional costs to be paid by the colleague.
Full details of the scheme and how to apply can be found here:
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