Conservation program experience at the Pod Volunteers centre in Koh Tao, Thailand - Riva Raghavan, age 13, Mumbai As the days that I spent with the conservation team on Koh Tao quickly passed by, the days here in Mumbai feel longer than ever wishing that I could live in the experience that a had a few weeks ago. The conservation program allowed me to explore my passion and love for marine life with various skills and various branches all under conservation. Every morning we had a lecture from 9:30-10:30. Usually, lectures for me are associated with sleep and boredom but these lectures weren’t making my eyes droop or making me feel drowsy. They actually opened up my mind to various questions that made me more curious than ever. After the lecture we would get a 30 minute break and then head out for our dive of that day. Each dive was a different subtopic under conservation. Some dives were monitoring and some we were physically making a difference! From the various dives we had my favourite one had to be the Drupella snail one! We picked up drupella snails (threats to corals) with tongs and then measured them once we were up on shore. This pattern is what I did everyday for a month and I simply loved it. I would definitely recommend the conservation program to you whether you are older than me or younger than me, everyone with the right mindset can make an impact! I feel that this program was a great use of my summer holidays as I had the best holiday ever and I learnt a lot of new things about the ocean. The New Heaven Team welcomed my dad and I and made us feel like we were at home. The encouraging and the motivating crew made our experience a thousand times better. The first week I had problems equalising my ears but my instructors Khan, Pod and Dev helped me believe that I could do it and then after that my problems vanished into thin air. I would absolutely go back to Pod Volunteers. I really can’t express my gratitude and love I have for their entire team. Thank you Kirsty, Dev, Pod, Khan and all the others who helped me accomplish a more knowledgable and experienced person that I was when I first arrived.