Volunteers and Digital Nomads

Who Comes

Two kinds of guest live and work on the campus beside the Lions. Volunteers give their time: they mentor young tech and design talents on their way to work as digital professionals, freelancers or entrepreneurs. Digital nomads and entrepreneurs come to work from the campus, to build projects, startups or outsourcing teams with the Lions, and they pay for their stay, which is one of the campus's income streams.

What Volunteers Do

1. Coding. Freelance web developers above all (WordPress, React, TypeScript, Node), and system and network administrators and database specialists.
2. Project management, sales and business. Business support for the Lions and for Digital Lions, the fair trade agency, which also takes professional volunteers for quality assurance.
3. Design and animation. Graphic designers at home in the Adobe suite; animators with Blender and After Effects. Freelancers are especially welcome.
4. Construction and maintenance. Engineers, architects and skilled trades for the campus buildings, recycling and upkeep.
5. Mentoring. On site and remotely through a mentoring platform; TechDada's volunteers mentor the students at Loropio Girls High School beside the women who came through the programme. The Lions Program Blueprint plans mentoring as a blend of peer mentors, trained Lions, and professional mentors.
6. Remote. Curriculum and training material, especially web and app development, animation and design; communication, fundraising and outreach.

On Site, Remote, or as a Nomad

1. On site, two to six months at the campus beside Lake Turkana, full time with board and lodging provided, or part time, about half a working week on the Lions' projects and the rest on your own work, paying for room and board. A remote volunteer whose hours cover an on-site stay can come part time at no charge.
2. Remote, from anywhere, through the mentoring platform and the remote team.
3. Digital nomads who are not volunteering join through Startup Lions: startuplions.org/digital-nomads.

How to Apply

Learning Lions runs the volunteer programme and takes applications on its website: apply as a volunteer. The programme is described at learninglions.org/volunteer and in the volunteer brochure. Questions go to info@learninglions.org.

Where They Sit

The campus hosts them, and the campus is Startup Lions'. In the December 2025 structure the Housing Team manages staff and long-term volunteer housing in the South West Village, and the Hospitality Team runs the seven guest units for visitors and digital nomads, with a conference and guest centre as the long-term plan. Both teams are Campus Management, under Startup Lions Assets Kenya and the Campus Administration Board. So on the Ukoo chart Volunteers and Digital Nomads hang from Startup Lions, while the recruiting runs through Learning Lions' website and the digital nomads through Startup Lions'.

What Still Needs Defining

1. Which team owns the volunteer programme day to day: the website recruits under Learning Lions, the campus houses under Startup Lions, and no department, board or role in the December 2025 structure names volunteers in its remit.
2. How a volunteer is vetted and inducted after the form, and what they sign.
3. Whether the Safeguarding Policy's code of conduct and reporting routes apply to volunteers and digital nomads in the same way as to staff; the policy's text has not been checked for this.
4. Who decides a stay's length and terms, and who answers the application.