THE President of Colebrooke Women’s Institute, Valerie Pennington, welcomed members to our September meeting which was held at Colebrooke Parish Hall.

A two-minute silence was held at the beginning of our meeting in memory of Queen Elizabeth II.

The minutes of our June meeting were read.

Members had also enjoyed their outing in July to Bickleigh Castle followed by lunch at Bickleigh Mill. Members and all those who came enjoyed our Coffee Morning which was held on August 6. Correspondence was then read out.

Our speaker was Carol Stoyle who gave us an informative and illustrated talk on her experiences of volunteering with Limpopo Eco Operations (LEO Africa).

LEO Africa is a wildlife monitoring, conservation and sustainable living volunteer project and was established in 2005 to monitor and collect data on the Big 5 and endangered species in the Kruger National Park.

The Big 5 species are lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards and buffalo. Volunteers come from around the world.

Volunteers help the experienced rangers and the work involves going on two monitoring drives a day to locate and record the species they see, anti-poaching watch, servicing camera traps (take out old picture card and insert new card) and Walk-ins to locate animals (only with an experienced ranger).

There is also the opportunity to do sleep-outs as well. Other more mundane jobs include wrapping trees with wire netting to prevent damage by elephants, clearing fallen trees and non-native plants and clearing rubbish.

Whilst volunteering Carol had seen many species of animals up close and brought photos of the many animals for us to see.

Carol initially volunteered for two weeks but has subsequently volunteered for longer periods of time (four weeks and three weeks).

Carol also brought along a fun quiz for us to match up animals and their footprints. We all had a go at this with varying degrees of success.

Our next meeting will be on October 11 at 7.30pm at Colebrooke Parish Hall when Andy King will be coming to talk to us about Chocolate Making.

For further information, contact Andrea Armstrong on 01363 84198.

AA