DO NOT RECOMMEND - Chipangali OR GoEco

It’s hard to write a negative review b/c the animals, mission & support staff at Chipangali were wonderful, but the overall experience wasn’t positive. We DID NOT have a positive experience with GoEco or Chipangali & recently left a two week volunteer program half way through.

We tried to be as empathetic as possible & give Chipangali the benefit of the doubt but due to multiple people getting sick left & right, the lack of COVID protocol, repeated bullying for wearing masks, a very uncomfortable physical encounter with a member of the Chipangali family, lack of volunteer training & hospitality, constant power outages & lack of cell service, we felt trapped in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Every day another issue occurred that was unacceptable or unprofessional i.e. we were called “brats” to our faces as a general greeting, rat feces found in volunteer food, multiple animals died due to lack of appropriate shelter, despite no volunteer training mistakes are apparently your fault & questions are ridiculed, etc…

The GoEco support team is apathetic & communication is dismal. The response times are 4 days for emails & 2 days for something urgent. After our experience with them, it’s hard to believe they advocate for volunteers or have their best interests in mind. For example, GoEco never informed us of a mandatory 10 day quarantine in Zim, we had to inform them & then chase down answers for days to see if we could still get into Zim. Nor did they tell us ALL other volunteers had cancelled or were leaving early due to COVID cases at Chipangali. GoEco's preparation docs don't inform you that USD cash is useless if not printed after 2006 & ATM's and cards don't work so you're effectively trapped without money if someone can't lend you money. The most traumatic issue was after a negative physical encounter with a member of the Chipangali family, GoEco’s answer was a copy & paste “we’re sorry, we will review this…”