THREE lucky North-East students will be jetting off to America on an exciting work experience opportunity this summer.

Katie Neesam, 18 and Danielle Whitley, 17, both from Hartlepool and Bekki Mullett, 17, from Darlington are flying off stateside on July 11.

All three girls are on the first year of an Animal Management National Diploma (Level 3) at the East Durham College’s Houghall Campus, near Durham.

They will be off on a 3-week work experience placement at The Conservators’ Centre in North Carolina, Mebane, USA.

The Conservators’ Center is a nonprofit organisation that conserves threatened species through responsible captive breeding, rescuing wildlife in need, and providing educational programs and support worldwide.

The girls will be helping with different tasks such as feeding, cleaning, watering and enrichment activities with different species of wild cats, wild dogs and primates, such as; tigers, lions, wolves, leopards, lemurs and many more.

Katie said: "I had been emailing a number of UK zoos trying to get a work experience placement and emailed the Conservation Center not realising it was in America.

"When they came back to us and said we could have a placement it was fantastic but we then had to work out how we could raise the money to go."

Danielle added: "We are really pleased with how the fundraising is going.

"We have done a number of fundraising activities such as; bag packing, an Easter raffle, candle party and we hope to have a stall at the Houghall Campus open day on Sunday."

The open day will be staged from 10am to 4pm.