Student Work Placements / Volunteering

Work Experience/Volunteering at the Mini Zoo

Are you a student studying to get into the animal care field in the future? Work experience placements and volunteering can be a great way of getting your foot in the door and gaining a valuable insight into what really is involved when working with animals.

At Wild Encounters Mini Zoo we offer the opportunity to get that experience with us, assisting the animal care team to look after a wide variety of domestic and exotic species. We can offer short or long term placements to suit your requirements but please note that due to staff numbers etc, slots are limited and so we may not always be able to accommodate all requests for placements.

Long term volunteers can also really help the animal care team with their daily tasks and the daily running of the Mini Zoo, with options also available for those that may like the idea of volunteering their time, meeting new people etc surrounded by nature and wildlife but don’t want to physically interact with the animals a whole bunch. Volunteers in these cases could possibly be manning touch tables during our busier periods, helping with promotion and advertising or volunteering more on a maintenance capacity with things like weeding, gardening and painting etc.

If you’re interested in a student work placement/volunteering with us then take a look at our requirements below and send us an email to getwild@wildencounters.ie with a little about yourself and when you’re looking for a placement and how long etc and we’ll see if we can assist where we can!

• we regret that for insurance purposes and health and safety due to some of the animals we work with we are not able to have volunteers/work experience students younger than 18 years of age as part of the animal care team
• although volunteering opportunities are particularly great for those currently working towards an animal/wildlife related course and is a great way of getting your foot in the door, we also welcome anyone that has a passion and keen interest in animals and wildlife who would like to just donate some of their time to help us out with the animals and the daily upkeep of the Mini Zoo
• volunteers at the Mini Zoo are truly part of the team and may be getting stuck into everything the staff do, whether its animal care and food prep, maintenance such as weeding and painting, or getting involved in public interactive sessions, it’s all part of the daily routines. It can be very rewarding but also pretty physical and so volunteers would need to be physically capable whilst also having the ability to interact with any visitors and assisting with questions or queries
• as volunteers you are not committed to the same hours and days as staff however to enable us to plan for tasks etc we do ask that volunteers try to commit to at least 1 regular day a week for continuity
• we have quite a varied selection of animals and species here at the Mini Zoo so ideally volunteers would be comfortable with all types of animals, especially when it comes to assisting with the handling sessions. A real passion for exotics is a must!
• due to staff numbers and health and safety etc volunteer spaces on any given day are limited on the animal team and so we regret that we may not always be able to accommodate all requests for volunteering opportunities but will try our best where we can
• we regret that short term work experience slots (week long blocks) on the animal care team are only available to those currently working towards an animal/wildlife related course in order to prioritise those that are trying to get into the animal industry in the future

If you’re looking to work with animals in the future (or know someone that is) then volunteering can give you a big advantage (previous people have gone on to qualify as vets, obtain jobs in wildlife conservation projects and more), so if you’d like to volunteer with us then please feel free to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!