Chuffed.org Team – Page 19 – The Chuffed Academy

August 8, 2017August 8, 2017

Success Story: Barefoot Fundraiser for Crow’s Path

“Back in 2007, I was running a long, winding, and dusty path through the endless (and scratchy) sage scrub near my home in southern California when the echoing dawn of a coyote’s howl cascaded up the valley and stopped me in my tracks. I cocked my ears and in the quiet of that moment I caught the drumming of my heart, the sweet tickling scent of a prickly pear flower in bloom, and the delight of a warm sun drawing up over the Santa Ynez Mountains. I was 50km into a 100km race and feeling like a wild animal, like I could run forever. My reverie was interrupted by the hum of an engine and OAR’s “Crazy game of poker” blaring from the speakers. My support crew had finally arrived! We had a quick dance party, gorged on PB&Js and then I kept running for another 4 hours.

My support crew was one way of building community, but I wanted to find other ways of translating the magic of an ultramarathon into a community-building experience. The race would take about 9 hours so I asked friends and families to “donate” 9 hours to doing something to make the world a more beautiful place (to borrow from Miss Rumphius). Every time I wanted to stop during the race I thought of all these beautiful moments transpiring around the country – 9 hours of stacking wood for an elderly neighbor, 9 hours of making rosary beads for a retirement community, 9 hours of gardening for a school – and I felt so lifted.

My next goal is to break the world record for fastest barefoot 100km. As with my previous ultras, I want to use this to inspire others and build community. My efforts this time center around Crow’s Path, an organisation I started to build a community of people forging connections to the natural world through primitive skills, play, exploration, and adventure. In 7 years we’ve inspired hundreds of kiddos to find what makes them happy, what connects them most deeply to self, others, and the natural world. But over the years we’ve also identified a number structural barriers that prevent some families from accessing our programs. This run is in some ways the first step in our organisation’s commitment to finding ways to make our programs truly accessible to all families in the Burlington community.”

Check out Crow’s Path crowdfunding campaign page here:

August 2, 2017August 2, 2017

How to Build a Team to Crowdfund $91,400 for Asylum Seekers

The Humanitarian Group - Libby Williams and Caroline Fleay

You’ve tried all the fundraising channels. You’ve applied for grants, done the trivia nights, approached potential corporate sponsors. Each raised a few thousand, but it’s never enough to get off the treadmill. If only you could raise enough not to have to worry about fundraising for a while, so you can focus on getting actual work done, right?

Meet Libby Williams and Caroline Fleay

Without any prior experience in crowdfunding, Libby and Caroline raised $91,400 in just 60 days.

Want to know how they did it?

In this case study, we’re giving you each and every step that was used, including examples of social media posts and emails, so that you can replicate the exact same strategy for your campaign.

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Background

The Humanitarian Group (THG) is a not-for-profit Community Legal Centre that provides migration assistance, legal advice and education for people new to Australia. When the Federal Government stopped providing funded legal assistance for most people seeking asylum in Australia, THG stepped up to help those seeking asylum in WA by opening a free legal clinic. Caroline, who has worked in the refugee sector for over 20 years, and Libby, who has volunteered for the same amount of time, both joined a collective of agencies supporting THG’s free legal clinic. Their role in the collective was to help THG source funding for the clinic. They made a few successful grant applications and hosted a couple of fund raising events, raising between $2,000 – $5,000 here and there, but there was an ever widening gap between costs and funds available. The free legal clinic was in danger of having to close, which would have resulted in hundreds of people in WA being left without legal assistance and facing the prospect of being returned to countries they had fled because they had experienced, or were at risk of experiencing, torture and persecution. Realistically, they needed an urgent cash injection of $80,000 to stay afloat, and so Libby and Caroline decided they needed to look outside of the box, and their comfort zones!

They researched fundraising ideas, and quickly learnt about the potential success of crowdfunding. Since they had no experience in crowdfunding, they knew they would need to be strategic.

‘We took a rather unorthodox approx to be honest. We’re both 50-year old women who weren’t frequent, or comfortable, users of social media prior to the campaign (we didn’t even have a Twitter account when we started) but we were desperate to raise the funds and nothing else had worked! As a result of our lack of social media skills we had difficulty trusting in its ability to achieve our fundraising goal, so we ended up doing what we do best i.e. ‘old fashioned’ relationship building around the campaign.’

Step 1: Build a Team

The first thing Libby and Caroline did was form a small collective of people who had the social media and marketing skills they lacked. This collective helped drive the campaign throughout. They also had an existing Facebook group of about 500 people that they could use to promote the campaign.

“A crucial part of building our team was identifying our own weaknesses and asking others for help. As we didn’t have a budget to work with, we had to rely on like-minded people generously donating their time and expertise. This required us to find even more time for a number of personal meetings with people we knew had the skills we were missing. The time spent on this was invaluable! A good example is the flyers we used that were a result of creative input from two of our campaign supporters, both marketing experts, who kindly advised (and created) for us throughout the campaign.

We also learnt very valuable lessons from another Legal Community Centre based in Victoria who had recently run a successful crowdfunding campaign. We met with the people involved – who were in Perth for a conference – and they were generous with their time and advice which gave us a lot of confidence to have a go ourselves. We would strongly recommend you find a similar, successful project early in your planning phase to model your own work on. Finally, we found the Chuffed support staff to be very helpful at every stage. They responded to queries quickly and thoroughly and we felt a good deal of personal support and empathy for our project. This was also important in building confidence in our ability to get the job done.”

Then Libby and Caroline went through their networks and identified about 50 people who they knew were rock solid and cared about the cause. Because they both worked or volunteered in the sector, they knew a lot of people who cared deeply about the situation facing people seeking asylum in WA. Together, they set out to meet these contacts in person, sending personal emails and making phone calls to the many people they knew.

“We took a very personal approach to inviting people to become a part of the campaign. We met with as many people as possible to have a coffee and a chat, made personal phone calls and let people know how they could be involved with positive action for people seeking asylum in our community. We were attempting to launch WA’s largest crowd fund to provide legal assistance for asylum seekers and asked people to join with us to make this big, bold plan work – and they did!”

In addition to this, the work that Caroline and Libby did was consistently supported by individuals from the collective of agencies who were part of THG free legal clinic support group. These agencies are all heavily involved in the sector and were very keen for the campaign to succeed. An appeal was made to members of this collective to commit to taking a personal approach with contacts within their own, often extensive networks – and so the group of people feeling a sense of ‘ownership’ of the campaign grew.

All of these personal approaches were designed to get two things: pre-commitments of funds, and people who could help with social media. Following each meeting, Libby and Caroline would send a follow-up email to thank them for their time, attaching their flyer, and asking them explicitly to either become a Financial Supporter or a Social Media Ambassador.

Here are copies of the flyers they used:

The asks were very clear – for financial donors it was to tell them how much they were going to pre-commit. For Social Media Ambassadors, it was to sign up to their Thunderclap (we’ll explain what that is below). An easy next step with a clear ‘yes/no’ answer was critical in helping people commit to the campaign.

Once a commitment to Thunderclap was made, a follow up email asking people to further commit to using their personal social media accounts and email to spread the word about Seeking Refuge WA for the duration of the campaign was made.

It took Libby and Caroline 6 months to have all their ‘in person’ conversations. But by the end, they had the pre-commitments and the team to launch big.

Step 2: Launch Big

Having read the Chuffed.org Crowdfunding Guide, Libby and Caroline knew that launch day had to be big, ideally raising 20-30% of the target in the first 3 days.

To make it a success, they planned three things:

1. Thunderclap

Libby and Caroline decided to use Thunderclap as a way to get more reach for the campaign on Launch Day.

What is Thunderclap? 

Thunderclap is a platform that lets people sign up and commit to post a message that you write on Twitter and Facebook on a certain time and day. Because there are so many people posting together, there’s a higher likelihood that posts will get seen by others.

The great thing is, you don’t need a huge following for a successful Thunderclap.

Signing up 73 supporters on Thunderclap gave Seeking Refuge WA a social reach of over 60,000 on the day.

2. Launch event

Libby and Caroline decided to launch the campaign during an event at the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, where Caroline is Deputy Director. They knew the event was likely to be well attended as The Hon. Michael Kirby, former High Court Judge and Patron of the Centre, would be speaking about Australian refugee policies. So they planned for Caroline and guests from a refugee background to launch Seeking Refuge WA following Michael Kirby’s address. During the launch, Caroline and guests outlined the situation facing people seeking asylum and the importance of the work of the free legal clinic, and how people could donate. There were 500 people in the audience, many of who were clearly interested in supporting the campaign, and the launch helped raise over $10,000 on day 1 of the campaign.

3. Thank every donor

As soon as donations started to flow in, Libby made sure that every supporter was thanked personally. In addition to this, some donors were asked if they were happy to be thanked publicly. This way the people who supported the campaign could see how much their donations were being appreciated, and it also provided an example for others who were considering donating. These positive donation messages received a lot of traction on social media.

In addition to Facebook, Libby also set up a Twitter account to spread the word about the campaign and continue to thank donors.

“I had never tweeted before, and had a big learning curve ahead. Fortunately, another member of our support team had extensive experience both professionally and personally with social media, and very kindly donated her time to the unenviable task of teaching me how to Tweet! Her tuition and ongoing personal support of our Twitter account resulted in a lot of good retweets which is what we were after.”

All of this activity meant that on launch day, the Seeking Refuge WA campaign was all over social media for people in Perth who cared about the cause.

Step 3: Get influencers on board

Before launching the campaign, Libby and Caroline also identified a number of key individuals who could either help them reach more people or access bigger donations.

1. Reaching more people

The team spent time identifying potential local and national organisations who might be interested, and prepared a list of contacts to engage with during the campaign. One way to do this is to either search directly in Facebook for groups or pages interested in your cause area or using Twitter’s Advanced search. Next, Libby attempted to grab their attention by tagging the influencers in Twitter posts. This resulted in some retweets from organisations (including Refugee Council Of Australia and Asylum Seeker Resource Centre) who have large online followings. The team met with others in person beforehand and kept them in the loop throughout the campaign to showcase how successful it had become. The popularity of the campaign itself made it much easier for these people to share with their networks.

2. Bigger donations

Prior to the campaign launch, Libby and Caroline had secured $20,000 in pre-pledged donations. These donations were used at strategic times to help maintain momentum during quiet donation times (every weekend!). Donors of $10,000 of this sum agreed that it could be put aside to be used in dollar for dollar matching during a mid-campaign slump.

Grace Forrest, from The Minderoo Foundation, had also followed the campaign with interest right from the start, kindly donating an exhibition of her photos to be used during the launch event. As the success of the campaign grew, Grace got back in touch with Libby and continued to support the campaign. The significant social media reach of the Minderoo Foundation was very helpful in providing Seeking Refuge WA with a new audience late in the campaign. Much to their delight, once the campaign had reached $67,000 in donations, The Minderoo Foundation donated $13,000 to get the campaign to its target of $80,000 and, in addition to this, offered a further $10,000 in dollar for dollar matching.

“We were so grateful when the Minderoo Foundation came on board to give us the remaining $13k to get us across the finish line. And then to offer dollar for dollar matching for every dollar beyond that, which took us over the $90,000 mark, was an added bonus! On the strength of this we decided to extend the campaign by one week to really take advantage of the dollar matching. Grace made it clear to us that it was because of the success we had already achieved that the Minderoo Foundation were prepared to back us and provide the funds to help us reach our target.”

In addition to the actual donations coming from the Foundation, Libby and Caroline were now able to go back to existing supporters to give them the great news and bring new life to the campaign. This is an example of the Campaign Update sent to existing supporters:

Step 4: Keep Promoting Till The End

Towards the end of the campaign and right before the donations from the Minderoo Foundation, Libby and Caroline worked hard to engage existing supporters and networks, encouraging them to help share the page with their networks. They had a multi-pronged approach.

1. Daily social media posts

People love a deadline so Libby started a daily countdown on social media to highlight the time pressure.

2. Rally existing supporters

Existing supporters were already the most invested in this campaign, and they wanted to see it succeed. Asking them for help with a final push provided the support needed to get the campaign across the finish line. Here’s the letter that was used:

Hello,

We are writing today to thank you so much for your kind support of Seeking Refuge WA. Your willingness to be involved has been overwhelming, and we are so encouraged by the number of people who clearly care deeply about those seeking asylum in WA. It’s hard to express how much we have appreciated the many, many emails sent, social media posts liked and shared, and conversations people like you have had – not to mention the amazingly generous donations we have received over the past 5 weeks of the campaign! We now have only 1 week to go and are tantalisingly close to our $80,000 target! The $65,600 already donated will allow The Humanitarian Group to move 82 people off their waiting list. But we dearly want to give them the funds to help 100 people who urgently need their help.

We are asking you today to join with us in this final week of the campaign for one more push to achieve our target of $80,000. We would be so grateful if one last time can you spread the word about Seeking Refuge WA to your own network of friends, relatives, colleagues, and encourage them all to donate (or donate again!).

Together we can change the lives of 100 people seeking asylum in WA. With thanks, The Seeking Refuge WA team

3. Continue to advertise perks

In the last week or two of the campaign the many fabulous perks that were available were advertised on social media in an attempt to persuade people to donate. Here is an example of some of the perks that were available.

And the result? That nearly vertical jump in donations right at the end:

Final Notes

Through the power of forming a collective and leveraging their personal networks, Libby Williams and Caroline Fleay were able to raise $91,400 for people seeking asylum in Western Australia. This amazed not only their family, friends and colleagues, but most importantly themselves.

“When we set out we knew THG needed $80,000, and even if we had only raised $40,000 we’d have been thrilled. We never expected to raise over $90,000! We are so amazed we did!” If Libby and Caroline can do it, you can too!

If you have an idea for a project or cause that you need funding for, but you’re not quite sure if you have the experience or networks to run a crowdfunding campaign, think of Libby and Caroline. Without any former experience or knowledge on crowdfunding, they were able to raise $91,400, smashing their $80,000 target, and ensure that many people seeking asylum in WA could access free legal assistance.

Start your campaign on Chuffed.org today. We provide free mentoring and support for anyone looking to crowdfund a social cause project.

August 1, 2017August 10, 2017

Community Leader: Darren

Meet Darren Sandford, Chuffed.org’s Community Leader from Melbourne. Darren comes from an IT background, and is passionate about human rights in developing countries. Read on to learn how Darren successfully combined crowdfunding, social marketing, and event organising to smash his fundraising goal…

Tell us a bit about yourself and your career (or life) so far.

I’m a dad to two teenage boys. I was born and raised in Melbourne. I had a 25 year career in Information Technology, in the banking and finance industry. I love photography, guitar, singing and inspiring people.

Why did you decide to become a Chuffed.org community leader?

2017 has seen a change in direction for me. Instead of managing IT plans, people and processes, I’ve taken a bit of sabbatical to reset my direction. I’m building on the skills that my corporate career gave me in training, coaching and leading to educate and inspire people. When I saw the opportunity to combine these skills with helping people that want to make a positive difference, using the Chuffed platform, I jumped at it immediately.

How did your crowdfunding journey begin?

My partner’s mother runs REAVI-Baho, a network of NGO’s in Burundi, Africa that provides support and assistance to survivors of sexual and gender based violence. Being currently located in Melbourne, she was feeling distanced from the cause she was passionate about. I encouraged her to think about what we could do from Melbourne. The answer was to create a fundraising campaign so we could send the funds directly to the cause in Africa. Being from an IT background, I evaluated the functionality and cost of the different crowdfunding platforms. Chuffed.org came up number 1 in my evaluation. We had a little bit of guidance on charity marketing from a business coach contact, but we got right onto creating our campaign following Chuffed’s help guides. We knew that video and pictures were important, so we recorded an interview about the organisation and our campaign, wrote a compelling story and gathered photos from the organisation in Burundi. We launched our campaign and ran our social marketing and fundraising event in parallel. The excitement of seeing donations flow in and getting comments and support was really fulfilling. The volunteers in Burundi couldn’t believe how much we were able to raise, without government grants. From having no funds to run a project, to setting the goal of registering 80 children for birth certificates and health care to increasing that goal to 300 children and mothers thanks to our campaign exceeded their wildest dreams.

What social cause are passionate about and why?

I’m passionate about women’s rights and education in developing countries. I believe in fairness and equality and I think there is work to do to ensure equal opportunities for all.

What relevant fundraising or other experience do you have that you can share with participants in the workshop?

I designed and co-managed a fundraising campaign in 2017 called “Gift a Birth Certificate in Burundi”. We exceeded our $8,000 goal and raised $14,000 in 40 days. We incorporated “REVO”, a fashion, music and charity auction fundraising event to raise awareness of the campaign and create a social media buzz. We tapped into enthusiastic and powerful women in Melbourne to be our designers, makeup artists and catwalk models. I would like to share the trials and triumphs of our campaign to inspire and empower others to smash their goals and make a difference.

What social cause project or campaign on Chuffed will the funds raised through the workshop support?

REAVI-Baho, who are supporting and empowering survivors of sexual and gender based violence in Burundi, Africa.

To get more info and tickets to Darren’s Workshop on 14th August 2017, click here.

August 1, 2017

Success Story: Nepal Rebuilding Project

“I’m Kate from Scotland and I’m raising money to help rebuild my Nepalese friend’s house which was destroyed in the 2015 earthquake. Chamar and his family are currently living in an animal outhouse.

I first met Chamar Lama in 2001 when I visited Nepal. As a tourist I was approached by many independent guides looking for work but Chamar had a gentle and kind presence that immediately appealed to me. He also had an extensive knowledge of the mountains and trekking routes so it was an easy choice to employ him as my trekking guide.

We have remained friends ever since through email and more recently skype. Chamar lives in a remote village in the Kavrepalanchok district of Nepal but is able to access the internet when he visits Kathmandu.

When the Nepalese earthquake struck in 2015 I was of course concerned about the wellbeing of Chamar and his family. Because of the damage to infrastructure following the earthquake it was a couple of weeks before I was able to make any contact. Fortunately Chamar and his family were alive and well but there had been extensive damage to many of the houses in the village including his own.

Chamar’s house has since been completely demolished. While aid money from other countries was extremely generous following the earthquake sadly, because of the endemic corruption in Nepal, much of this money never reached the people on the ground. Chamar is only eligible for a £2,300 rebuilding grant from the Nepalese government whilst local engineers have costed the rebuild at £15,000. As a subsistence farmer and occasional trekking guide Chamar and his family have no way of paying for the rebuild of their house.

We have raised almost £2000 so far, a great start but there’s still a long way to go before we can start the rebuild. Thank you to chuffed for enabling me to have this platform.”

Learn more about Kate’s awesome crowdfunding campaign here:

August 1, 2017

Success Story: Free to Shine

Nicky is the founder of Free To Shine, a non profit in Cambodia that works to protect the most vulnerable girls and get them back in school in order to prevent sex trafficking. Free To Shine first began after our founder spent time in Cambodia talking with survivors of sex trafficking:

“I asked survivors who had been rescued how I could help, and I was hardly prepared for their answer. I thought they’d want something straight-forward and easy to provide, like university tuition fees, but they didn’t want anything for themselves. Instead they wanted for no other girl to go through the horrors they’d been through. They asked me to go out into the rural villages, find the girls who weren’t in school, and protect them. They told me that if these young girls were in school they would not be trafficked.”
Nicky Mih, Founder & Managing Director, Free To Shine.

The International Labour Organisation states that ‘getting girls into schools and keeping them there is vital to reducing their vulnerability to trafficking,’ while UNESCO report that there are currently 25,697 girls in Cambodia who should be in primary school but are not, and a further 119,972 girls who should be in grades 7-9 but are not.

Free To Shine follows a UN human rights based model and recognizes that in order for girls to succeed in school and remain safe, their basic needs must be addressed. Therefore, in addition to mentoring and tuition assistance, Free To Shine provides tools that allow our girls to succeed on their own including; a bike, a water filter, home repairs/re-builds and seeds for them to plant their own garden.

Free To Shine’s commitment to education in order to prevent sex trafficking goes beyond the girls in our scholarship program. We also provide community classes to our girls, their family members, neighbours, and broader communities, to teach them about their rights and how to protect themselves and their families from exploitation and abuse.

By Kevin. Learn more about Kevin’s awesome campaign here:

August 1, 2017August 1, 2017

Success Story: Empowering Women in the Solomon Islands

“My name is Cathy Hunt, one of the Principal Producers of the WOW Festival 2018 – Celebrating Women of the Commonwealth. I first met Zillah (who runs this campaign) at one of our recent WOW ‘Think In’ community consultation events. Zillah’s passion, enthusiasm and commitment to improve the health of young girls and women in the Solomon Islands greatly impressed me and I knew instantly that the WOW team would support her campaign. We first heard about this issue in 2016 when we met with Kirsty Sword Gusmao from Timor Leste. In Australia, we are largely unaware of the restrictions of the imposition of menstruation on young women and girls of the Pacific region and how this impacts their education, independence and life opportunities.

Zillah’s work with Loloma Foundation and Kaleko Steifree aligns perfectly with of the sprit and philosophy underpinning WOW Festival 2018 – her story is the kind of story presented at WOW festivals. We are very keen to involve Zillah in WOW in some way. It is essential to raise awareness of this critical issue and its impact – it is also affecting young girls and women in rural and remote Aboriginal communities here in Australia.

With WOW Festival 2018 we have the unique opportunity in Brisbane next year (6 – 8 April 2018, Brisbane Powerhouse, part of the Commonwealth Games Cultural Program) to connect with women of the Commonwealth through this significant high-profile international event which will be uplifting, challenging, inclusive and uniting.

We know from, previous WOW Festival research, that participation in WOW can change lives – the lives of the participating women, girls, boys and men, the lives of women in their communities when they return home and even policy makers at the highest levels. Participants are exposed to new ideas, skills, tough discussions, connections, artists, mentors, inspiration and fun, enabling them to get involved in creating change

WOW Festival 2018 will:

Celebrate the achievements of women and girls
Identify the barriers to them reaching their full potential
Build a sense of community belonging and wellbeing
Motivate women and girls to make changes to their lives; build the confidence that they can do this and introduce them to a new set of skills to assist in that process.
Leave a legacy of women and girls, boys and men across the Commonwealth, empowered to make life better for themselves, their families and communities.

Learn more about this awesome campaign that Cathy supports below:

August 1, 2017

Success Story: CameroonONE: Fostering A New Life

“For many years, I’ve been in horror as the countless negative situations in the world overwhelm me with their intensity. While I was in community college I did a presentation on poverty around the world and the information I uncovered during my research left me with a burning desire to do all I could do make the world a better place for everybody. I was already donating what I could to charities that were doing great work, but I knew that my impact needed to be greater in order to be a light in a world that can seem so dark at times.

For a while I wandered aimlessly in life, knowing that I wanted to make a positive difference in the world but not even knowing where to begin. I checked off boxes, kept my head high, and pushed through many personal trials that life threw at me. It wasn’t until I arrived at Northern Illinois University and was halfway through my first semester there that I realized a path I could take in my life where I could truly make a profound impact.

One of the most inspiring and humble people I’ve ever met in my life, Dennis Barsema, came into my classroom and told us his personal story – one full of strength, endurance, and compassion. He had been massively successful, and was now using his money and time very generously to help inspire future leaders of tomorrow – people who would give back just like he has. He spoke to us about the emerging field of Social Entrepreneurship, which I immediately knew was my calling and passion in life. Finally, after all these years of just filling in boxes to finish school and get a good job I had found something I was also passionate about.

Social Entrepreneurship is essentially using business as a way to create not only financial wealth, but social wealth as well. I am very fortunate to be working with CameroonONE, as they are very focused on building social wealth for the communities they work in. I was drawn to CameroonONE because they are working on addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and they believe in building a better world for future generations. It warms my heart to know that great organizations like CameroonONE exist that are making a positive difference in this world, and I’m thrilled to be part of their team.”

Check out Josh’s crowdfunding campaign page below:

July 31, 2017July 31, 2017

Success Story: Mass Neutering and Vaccination Clinic in South East Asia

“I’m Molly Birchmore and for the past three years I have been making my way around Asia gaining as much conservation work experience as possible.

In August 2016 I moved to Nepal to work at the only ethical elephant tourist facility in the country: Tiger Tops Elephant Camp. Here I came to understand the issues around the large stray and community owned dog population. Stray dogs pose a treat to livestock, the endangered wildlife of Chitwan National Park by hunting and community members by carrying rabies. With my colleague Muzza Munro we teamed up with the Himalayan Animal Rescue Trust (HART) to run a Mass Neutering and Vaccination Clinic in the villages surrounding Tiger Tops Elephant Camp. Over five days we treated 181 dogs! With the help of Chuffed.org and our amazing donors we raised over £3000 to fund the programme and give a little back to HART to help them continue their great work.

In the final weeks before the clinic started, while I was finalising plans, Muzza rushed to Sumatra to aid orphaned baby elephant Paichit; an innocent victim of the palm oil industry. Found alone and starving at just over a year old, he was in dire need of our help. Once the dog clinic was completed the decision was simple; move to Sumatra to help give consistency in Paichit’s care and see him grow into a healthy, happy adult elephant.

We have been working with Paichit and his Mahouts for just over a month now. We have bought 80kg of specialist milk formula, scientifically designed for baby asian elephants, from Singapore which is now an integral part of his daily diet. We have constructed a small, night-time chain free enclosure for him which he really enjoys and renovated the prep kitchen into a space his mahouts feel proud to work in.

As with the rescue and recovery of any being, Paichit’s journey will inevitably encounter turbulence, we will support him and his mahouts every step of the way. With only 400 wild elephants left in the Banda Aceh region of Sumatra Paichit is a glaring reminder that we must take greater action in conserving the fragile eco-systems of this island. The only place in the world where elephants, orang-utans and tigers still live in the wild together, it is our responsibility as citizens of this planet to do all we can to stop the destruction and reverse the damage that has already been done…it is not yet too late.

In the coming months, as Paichit grows, we will need to buy him more specialist milk formula and in the next few weeks we will begin construction of a larger, day-time, chain-free enclosure that will be suitable for Paichit as he grows and the other conservation patrol elephants who reside at the camp. With your help we can make this happen and ensure that Paichit not only has a future but a life worth living.”

Learn more about how Tiger Tops and the Himalayan Animal Rescue Trust teamed up to run a mass neutering and vaccination clinic 200 stray and community owned dogs in the villages surrounding Tharu Lodge on their campaign page: