About Us

The Great Projects aims to promote the importance of setting standards in endangered animal welfare and conservation in the tourism sector. A collection of award winning projects or inspiring tales of unsung hero's in animal conservation, are used to showcase working models of endangered animal protection tourism around the world. The Great Projects believes we define responsible tourism by using tourism as a tool to effect conservation of endangered animals like orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, turtles, dolphins, tigers, elephants and other animals and their vulnerable habitats like rainforests and coral reefs.

The Great Projects is brought to you by multi award winning, responsible tourism social enterprise, Way Out Experiences in the UK. For two years in a row, The Great Projects were winners at the prestigious Virgin Holiday's Responsible Tourism Awards 2009 and 2010. We were highly commended winners in the Best operator in conservation category and Best Volunteer Organisation respectively. We won the award for our flagship volunteer project, the Great Orangutan Project.

The Great Orangutan Project is a collection of orangutan conservation projects throughout Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo and is now the number one company sending volunteers abroad to experience conservation of orangutans. On one of our more popular volunteer programmes in Malaysia, 121 of our volunteers brought more money to conservation of orangutans than 95,000 tourists on orangutan holidays booked with local and international agents, in the same period at the same destination.

Flagship endangered species, such as orangutans, are used to explain the complex interrelationship between humans and the environment, allowing you to relate to problems and engage in solutions. Voluntourism and volunteering immerses the everyday person into the heart of the matter, at site, and delivers an experience of what it would be like if you were to work and live as a animal keeper or a conservationist. This has created our unrivalled volunteer sending service for people passionate about helping to save endangered animals like the orangutans in Borneo, gorillas in Africa, turtles in Malaysia or lions in South Africa etc.

Experiences, feedback and open dialogue of everyday people visiting or participating at these project sites can help shape our service. Charity partners fundraising for these animals are invited to help create protocols in "elephant protection tourism", "orangutan protection tourism", "gorilla protection tourism" and "turtle protection tourism" to watchdog over us and ensure we and our associates are always 100% commited to the continual conservation of these amazing animals.

With up to 50% of the total revenue of The Great Projects donated back into animal projects, our social enterprise model lends itself as a showcase and an example. Organisations similar to our ethos and practice migrate onto The Great Projects.com website to showcase and invite everyday people to connect with endangered animals in a responsible, sustainable and collaborative way. Helping to save endangered animals is on our daily to do list. Take a note. Make it yours.