Last week we had our latest long term volunteer, Daša, sharing with us her life story. It’s too good to keep just for ourselves so we decided to share her with you. Enjoy her!
Hi! My name is Daša and I come from Slovenia. I’ve always loved animals, which is one of the reasons I chose to do my bachelor’s in biology and later continue my master’s in Ecology and Biology with Natural Science. At the moment, I’m finishing my master thesis on the European hamster (Cricetus cricetus) using geometric morphometric methods, to indicate differences in size and shape of mandible between different location and gender. After spending a couple of weeks as an EVS volunteer back in 2017, I promised myself that after I finish my studies, I would do long-term volunteering before I search for a job. Somehow, I came across A Rocha in Portugal and its microplastics project, which I found very unique and interesting. Now I have been in A Rocha for almost two months. Apart from my microplastics project I help with administrative work, monitoring Little Owls ( Athene noctua), participating in Coastwatch project, and learning Portuguese at the local language school. I’m also going to develop my own project, which will be based on monitoring Otters (Lutra lutra) at the Ria de Alvor and checking water quality.
Daša is volunteering at A ROCHA sponsored by European Solidarity Corps project number 2021-1-PT02-ESC51-VTJ-000037395
