In our January project report, we recalled how our efforts in 2019 had taken the number of children we have provided educational opportunities to up to 2200 across 25 different villages and this was thanks to your amazing support. In as little as three months, so much has changed: around the world people are living in lockdown due to the outbreak of COVID19 (coronavirus), and India is no exception. Right now, Indian families are confined to their homes and schools have closed down, people are in a total lockdown for 21 days, but the rural schools close even before that began.
We have no idea how long this situation will last, and in that respect we are no different from anyone else, but what we do know is that in rural India, these poor rural families will be crammed into a single room or at best two rooms, there will be no furniture to sit on for many, and those who have a bed or two will take it in turns to sleep there. Add to this, no running water and no electricity for the many and you may start to see how difficult life will be for the children of these families with no school, unable to go outside to play with friends, and nothing to occupy their minds.
We normally ask for help so we can provide education packs so these children have a chance to go to school, but now these education packs may well be their only chance to learn with or without school. Now more than ever, the basic learning books which we include in the packs for the youngest children which teach them the alphabet in Hindi and English along with how to count; could be vital to ensuring that a generation of young children living with wild tigers don’t miss out on education for life. With this in mind, and with your help, we’d like to put a greater emphasis on these basic educational resources and also bilingual dictionaries for the older children. We’d like to ensure that every child we help has access to learning in both Hindi and English at this difficult time, but we’d also like to give them the basic writing materials so that if and when the schools re-open these children can go to school too.
In the next couple of months, we’d like to provide educational resources for at least 250 children living with wild tigers, but we can’t do this without your help. We want the poorest children to learn to read, write and equally importantly learn about wildlife, nature and conservation. We want these children to have a chance to grow up and become protectors of wild tigers rather than have a lifestyle which is entirely dependent on encroachment or destruction of wild tiger habitat for survival. We want to ensure that these children don’t miss out on the opportunity to get an education which would enable them to have a better future too, but sadly since our last report we haven’t received the donations to facilitate this. So when you consider that for just £20/US$26 we could provide the educational resources to school 4 young children living with wild tigers: https://goto.gg/32565.
We had also hoped to be able to fund scholarship places at a new school in Bandhavgarh, but the uncertainty caused by COVID19 and a lack of funding have meant that we must put this plan on hold, for now. This is still something which we would like to do, but without donations it is impossible. If we cannot raise new funds, then another generation of young children will miss out on education and could, as a result of this, become future tiger poachers. If you want to help us to prevent this from happening: don’t delay donate £20/US$26 today and help us to send 4 children living with wild tigers to school: https://goto.gg/32565. It would only take donations from 63 of our followers today, and we could help at least 250 of these children, which would be truly amazing!
If all our supporters could do the same, maybe we’ll be able to break down some barriers for children living with wild tigers whose parents simply can’t afford to send them to school because the cost of basic writing materials is too high. We know that you don’t want to be the generation which has to tell your children and grandchildren that wild tigers are extinct because of a lack of education in the communities which lived around them: https://goto.gg/32565.
Remember: when we provide education packs for children living with wild tigers we are reducing the risk of future tiger habitat destruction AND ensuring that these children have the opportunity to become future tiger protectors.
I would like to thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food because of this help); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for inclusion in the education packs which we distribute. Stay Safe in these challenging times.
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Happy New Year to all our supporters, we’re certainly hoping that 2020 will be a great year for wild tiger conservation, with your help.
In our October project report, we reminded you how some amazing help from our supporters had enabled us to help 180 children living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh to go to school in 2019-20 because we were able to provide education packs with the basic writing materials and books needed to make this a reality. This took the total number of children we have helped since 2010 to 2200 across 25 different villages. With more than 70 villages around Bandhavgarh, we still have a lot of work to do.
People always ask me “How can providing education packs be considered wild tiger conservation”? They back up their questions with statements like “I want to help to save wild tigers, not children,” or “I want to donate to a project which will help wild tigers not send children to school!” I understand that on the face of it, it’s not unreasonable to not connect education packs with wild tiger conservation, but essentially it is a fundamental part of what we do. Imagine for a moment what would happen if a child in the developed world never went to school: he or she would reach adulthood without the ability to read or write, it is likely that they also would find difficulty in articulating conversation with their educated peers and potential employers, that is if indeed they had any employment options at all. Their prospects wouldn’t be good at all….
Now think about the same situation in rural India, the uneducated child who becomes an illiterate adult with little or no chance of securing a job. Add into the mix the fact that the youngster will possibly get married at 14 and soon after have a family to feed, as well as themselves! Where will they find the money and food to survive? In short they have a couple of options: it is likely that they will have been working in the fields of their parents’ farm since they were 4 or 5 years old so they’ll know about growing crops but the problem is where? If their parents didn’t have any land, it is more likely that they will have collected mahua flowers (for Indian alcohol) or Tendu leaves (for Indian tobacco) or firewood from a very young age in the very forests where tigers and leopards roam, if they haven’t been killed by a wild animal whilst undertaking these dangerous activities. They need to collect around 2000 flowers or 5000 Tendu leaves just to earn about 100 rupees (roughly £1.10/US$1.50); the wood which they cut down in the forests may be sold illegally but is most likely used to create fires for heating and cooking. You may think, well this is ok they have employment and something to eat and in part you’d be right, however, picking mahua flowers and Tendu leaves is seasonal and the collection period lasts for just a few weeks per year after that the income source dries up. Crop growing is also seasonal and requires the cutting down of trees and clearing of forest habitat to make space for crops to grow, if the youngster doesn’t have much money they won’t be able to buy seeds nor recover when their crops are eaten by marauding wildlife. In such cases, uneducated villages often turn to extreme measures to get the money needed to feed their families. These measures include: snaring herbivores to sell the meat, but this reduces the tigers’ prey base leading to increased human-tiger conflict when the tigers predate livestock instead of native prey; poisoning or snaring (poaching) tigers so that they can make some money from selling the tigers’ body parts and skins, and stop the predation of livestock from their village; selling information about the movement of wild tigers to poaching gangs or providing accommodation for poachers so that they can integrate in the village and not stand out when they move through the forest. So as you can see, a lack of education threatens both the life of wild tigers and their forest habitat https://goto.gg/32565.
Furthermore, we have observed that not only do educated children have better employment prospects; they marry later; have fewer children and thus reduce the future impact on the precious forest resources of the wild tigers’ habitat. So we can say we a good deal of confidence that providing education packs to send children to school does have a direct impact on wild tiger conservation.
It hardly seems like yesterday, but 3 months have elapsed since our last report and it’s now a worrying 7 months since we had sufficient funds to help the rural children from the poorest communities surrounding wild tigers to have the opportunities afforded to them by a proper education. In 2020, we want to provide new beginnings for at least 250 children living with wild tigers, but we can’t do this without your help. We want the poorest children to go to school where they can learn to read, write and equally importantly learn about wildlife, nature and conservation. We want these children to have a chance to grow up and become protectors of wild tigers rather than have a lifestyle which is entirely dependent on encroachment or destruction of wild tiger habitat for survival. We had hoped to be able to fund some scholarship places at a new school where these rural children would have an opportunity to not just learn to read and write, but also to learn how to read and write in English as well as their native Hindi. This is still something which we would like to do, but without donations it is just a dream, an aspirational target. As we stand, all of the donations we have received for educational resources to date have been used to help the 2200 children we’ve helped already. If we cannot raise new funds, then another generation of young children will miss out on education and could become future tiger poachers. If you want to help us to stop this now, please donate £20/US$26 and help us to send 4 children living with wild tigers to school: https://goto.gg/32565. If 63 of our followers did this today, we could help at least 250 children this year, which would be amazing!
If all our supporters could do the same, maybe we’ll be able to break down some barriers for children living with wild tigers whose parents simply can’t afford to send them to school because the cost of basic writing materials is too high. We’d like to ensure that when we’re old and grey we can tell the next generation of children and grandchildren that there are still tigers in the wild and that because of education there will be wild tigers for many years to come: https://goto.gg/32565.
Don’t forget: when we provide education packs for children living with wild tigers we are reducing the risk of future tiger habitat destruction AND ensuring that these children have the opportunity to become future tiger protectors.
I would like to thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food on their tables); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for inclusion in the education packs we distribute. Happy New Year.
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In our last project report, we told you how some amazing help from our supporters enabled us to help 180 children living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh to go to school because we were able to provide education packs with the basic writing materials and books needed to make this a reality.
Three months have now passed since our last report and it is four months since we last had sufficient funds to help the rural children from the poorest communities to have a chance to grow up and have a career which isn’t entirely dependent on encroachment or destruction of wild tiger habitat for survival. Thanks to your amazing support, the 180 children we helped took the total number of children given education opportunities by Tigers4Ever to 2200. We have helped children in 25 villages to go to school where they can learn to read, write and equally importantly learn about wildlife, nature and conservation. These children have a chance to grow up and become protectors of wild tigers rather than farmers who need more and more land for their crops and grazing livestock.
We had hoped to be able to fund some scholarship places at a new school where these rural children would have an opportunity to not just learn to read and write, but also to learn how to read and write in English as well as their native Hindi. This is still something which we would like to do, but without donations it is just a dream, an aspirational target. It has been a difficult few months in respect of fundraising for our education projects and we have been unable to fund any more education packs as a result.
As we head towards winter, Halloween is almost upon us and we are stunned each year when we learn how much is spent annually in the UK (£475 million) and USA (US$7.5billion) on Trick or Treat celebrations and Halloween costumes! This is even more surprising when compared to the £20 (US$26) which is needed for education packs to send four children living with wild tigers to school for a year. The amount spent on Halloween in the UK alone is four times more than would be needed to send every child living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh to school for 4 years! With this in mind, could we ask you all for a small favour this Halloween, please? When out Trick or Treating with the children or grandchildren could you ask them to cut a tiger’s face in their pumpkins and put some black stripes on them too? When people ask why a tiger pumpkin, please tell them it is to help save tigers in the wild and ask them to put a few pennies or cents in a jar or box to help the cause. At the end of the evening, please count up all the pennies (cents) and make an equivalent donation here: https://goto.gg/32565. If all our supporters could do the same, maybe we’ll be able to break down some barriers for children living with wild tigers whose parents simply can’t afford to send them to school because the cost of basic writing materials is too high.
We want you and your children to have fun celebrating Halloween but we’d also like to ensure that when the next generation grows up to share the fun with their own children that there will still be tigers in the wild, and they can pass on the message about tiger themed pumpkins saving wild tigers for years to come: https://goto.gg/32565.
Don’t forget: when we provide education packs for children living with wild tigers we are reducing the risk of future tiger habitat destruction AND ensuring that these children have the opportunity to become future tiger protectors.
I would like to thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food on their tables); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for inclusion in the education packs we distribute.
Links:
In June, we were able to provide education packs for 180 children living with wild tigers, thanks in no small part to your incredible continued support. We had feared for a large part of 2019 that we would only be able to help 35 children from the poorest rural communities to go to school. We are grateful that you rallied around and helped us to help more than four times as many children.
People often say to us, why are you giving education packs to children in the villages? How does this help you to save wild tigers? Well the answers are quite simple really: Firstly, children in the poorest rural communities living with wild tigers often come from large families who can barely afford to put food on the table let alone buy the books and writing materials so their children can go to school. If these children don’t go to school, they will grow up in the villages following exactly in the footsteps of their parents; having large families and being entirely dependent on the land to earn enough money to feed their growing families. Well, the land in the villages isn’t infinite so trees from the forest will be felled to make more space for houses and crops, thus making the tigers’ habitat shrink more and more as each year passes. So, how do the education packs help? I hear you say. Well it means that the children can go to school and their parents can still afford to feed them. Furthermore, in school the children learn about forest ecology, climate change, environmental impact and population growth versus the availability of food, in short they learn to read, write and disseminate information. In the nine years since Tigers4Ever was launched we have seen that educated parents have fewer children some only have one, two or three children whereas uneducated families tend to have between eight and twelve children. So providing education packs reduces habitat destruction AND helps to curb population growth, this was backed up by reductions in the number of children in the villages of Ranchha and Dobha (2018) compared to when we first distributed education packs there in 2012 (Ranchha) and 2013 (Ranchha and Dobha). Secondly, if the children of the villages are to grow up and become future protectors of the forest and wild tigers, they must have an education to secure these jobs. So, by providing education packs to children living with wild tigers we are reducing the risk of future tiger habitat destruction AND ensuring that these children have the opportunity to become future tiger protectors.
This year, we distributed education packs to the villages of Ghanghod (65), Barkhera (35) and Damna (45) with the remaining 35 education packs being given to local NGO Global Tiger Conservation Society (GTCS) as part of our ongoing collaboration with them to provide “pop-up” schools in the poorest rural communities. Again, we were pleased to see that our previous visits to the villages has had an impact on the number of children of school age as we had distributed 108 education packs in Ghanghod and 110 education packs in Damna in 2014; in 2015 we distributed 56 education packs in Barkhera and 60 education packs in Damna.
Currently in Bandhavgarh, a new private school is being built where local children will have the opportunity to learn subjects in both English and Hindi. This will be a fee paying school and we are currently in the process of investigating further details about the school, its teachings and its fees. If the school meets our criteria we will be looking into funding annual scholarships for children to attend the school who would otherwise not have the opportunity to go to that school. The new school is set to open its doors for the first time this month so we intend to conduct some performance investigations and feedback studies over the coming months to ensure that it is delivering lessons to the promised standard and to a level which is equal to or better than that which is delivered by the state school in the next town. We hope to be in a better position to report on the potential scholarships in time for the next newsletter, in the interim we will continue to raise funds for the provision of further education packs so that the children from the poorest rural communities will have an opportunity to learn.
If we could raise another £500 (US$670) by 30 May 2019 we would have sufficient funds to provide learning opportunities for another 55 children. So, if once again, we could ask you to forego just one cup of coffee and a cake or sandwich from your favourite coffee store this month and donate what you would have spent there, here instead: https://goto.gg/32565. We know that knowing that you have made a real difference for the future generations of wild tigers will make you feel great too.
If you are planning to get fit for that summer vacation on the beach by doing a fun run, cycle event or something wacky, why not chose to do it as a sponsored event? Perhaps you want to get fit before winter and the extra indulgence which piles on the pounds around the thanksgiving or Christmas holidays, why not fundraise around your weight loss goals as a sponsored event too? You could have fun, achieve your goals and help us to achieve ours too and in the process ensure that we can educate the next generation of wild tiger protectors. It only takes a minute to become a Tigers4Ever fundraiser and you even get your own personal page link to share with your friends and colleagues on social media, etc. Act now before it is too late for wild tigers by setting up your fundraiser page here: https://www.globalgiving.org/dy/v2/fundraisers/start/?fundraiser.projids=32565.
As we have mentioned previously, the impact of our education project goes well beyond enabling a number of children to attend school, who may not otherwise have chance. It has an impact on the wider tiger community around Bandhavgarh too, as we source all the contents for inclusion in the Tigers4Ever education packs from local suppliers in India, and create employment for those who wrap the education packs and deliver them to our Indian representatives for distribution.
We still hope to provide education packs for another 320 children in the villages around Bandhavgarh in time for the start of the next school year, but we can only do this if we can raise sufficient funds, a further £2003 (US$2685) is still needed for this. Just £10/$13 will help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. If you would like to make a new one-off donation please visit https://goto.gg/32565 where you can seemany examples of how your donation will help. If you are thinking of helping on a regular basis, matched funds are available from GlobalGiving partners for your donation if you donate monthly for at least 4 months, e.g. a donation of £10 (US$13) per month would be worth £50 (US$65) to Tigers4Ever at month 4, including the bonus matched funds. If you are a taxpayer, living in the UK, you can make an even greater impact by adding Gift Aid to your donation (at no extra cost to you), which would mean with matched funds your £10 monthly donation could be worth £60 to Tigers4Ever after just 4 months (including bonus matched funds and Gift Aid); which would enable your donation to have 50% greater impact for wild tigers!Education is a vital component of saving wild tigers because humans have the greatest influence on the future survival of tigers in the wild. We know that educated families have fewer children.
I would like to thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food on their tables); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for the education packs we distribute.
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In February, we feared that we wouldn’t raise sufficient funds to provide any more than 35 education packs for the poorest children living with wild tigers. Well, it has been a real challenge but thanks to your kind donations we will be able to provide more than double that number, which means that at least 100 of the poorest children living with wild tigers will have the chance to go to school when the new school year starts at the beginning of July. Thank you for helping us to do this, your invaluable support means the world to us.
We have ordered the ecology books for the education packs for the older children today; this will give them the opportunity to see the value of the forest and its wild inhabitants, whilst appreciating the fact that every single action in the forest by them and their families has a consequence. We hope that receiving these education packs and ecology books helps the children to become future protectors of the forest and the wild tigers which inhabit it, rather than destroyers of the forest landscape to make space for agriculture and industry.
Sadly, we haven’t raised enough yet to be able to provide education packs for our collaboration with GTCS who run the “pop-up” schools in the poorest rural communities without access to a school for the hundreds of children growing up there. These education packs are a vital component of this project because the basic writing materials are used over and over by many children attending the “pop-up schools” so that the largest number of children possible can benefit. If we can donate just 50 education packs for our collaboration with GTCS then as many as 250 children could benefit from learning about nature and ecology plus gain basic reading and writing skills at these “pop-up” schools. If we could raise another £160 (US$215) by 17 May 2019 we would be able to help these children to give learning opportunities where they don’t exist for another year. So could we ask you to forego a coffee or a cake from your favourite coffee store this week and donate what you would have spent here instead: https://goto.gg/32565? We know that knowing that you have made a real difference will make you feel great too.
If you are planning to get fit for that summer vacation on the beach by doing a fun run, cycle event or something wacky, why not chose to do it as a sponsored event? You could have fun, achieve your goals and help us to achieve ours too by ensuring that we can educate the next generation of wild tiger protectors. It only takes a minute to become a Tigers4Ever fundraiser and you even get your own personal page link to share with your friends and colleagues on social media, etc. Act now before it is too late for wild tigers by setting up your fundraiser page here: https://www.globalgiving.org/dy/v2/fundraisers/start/?fundraiser.projids=32565.
We are now selecting one of the small villages around Bandhavgarh which has suffered due to human-animal conflict recently; where we will distribute education packs to at least 100 of the poorest children. It will be a difficult decision because many villages lose crops (and their livelihoods) to persistent crop raids by the herbivores and monkeys, in addition to loos of livestock due to predator (tigers, leopards, wild dogs, etc.) attacks. We will need to use a weighted scale to assess which village has suffered the greatest impact as we are unable to help more than one village this time. Past experience shows that the villages most affected by persistent human-animal conflict are those most likely to leave out baited (poisoned) meat for predators or set a series of wire traps to halt invading animals in their tracks. By helping these villages we hope to mitigate the potential for such retaliatory attacks. We will use the information which we receive form our Anti-Poaching Patrols in this respect as they monitor these potential high risk situations for wild tigers. We know that by providing assistance in affected villages helps the inhabitants to love tigers and other wildlife again, which also reduces the risk of retaliatory action. This year, we will also need to choose our village carefully as distributing education packs to only some children rather than all in a village may have the undesired consequence of inflaming the human-animal conflict situation with the aggrieved parents who can see no benefits of wild tigers as their children have missed out.
As we have mentioned previously, the impact of this project goes well beyond enabling a number of children to attend school, who may not otherwise have chance. It has an impact on the wider tiger community around Bandhavgarh too, as we source all the contents for inclusion in the Tigers4Ever education packs from local suppliers, and create employment for those who wrap the education packs and deliver them to our Indian representatives for distribution.
Unseasonable weather conditions have continued to make life difficult for everyone living in and around Bandhavgarh, including the tigers and other wildlife, in the last three months. This has led to food scarcity for both humans and wildlife, which has in turn, increased the likelihood of human-animal conflict as both are competing for the same scarce resources. Low crop yields have left uneducated villagers with little money for food and few employment prospects, so they have turned to picking tendu leaves (for Indian tobacco) and mahua flowers (for the manufacture of local alcohol), and harvesting honeycombs from within the tiger forest. The income from such high risk activities is a mere pittance whilst the risk of a tiger or other predator encounter is very high. Villagers earn just Rs.125 (around £1.50/$1.75) for the collection of each 5000 tendu leaves. As previously reported, this puts extreme financial pressures on the poor rural people, so when faced with the prospect of buying basic materials for their children to go to school or feeding the family, the latter always wins, of course.
We still hope to provide education packs for 220 children in the villages around Bandhavgarh in time for the start of the new school year in July 2019, but we can only do this if we can raise sufficient funds, a further £986 (US$1321) is still needed for this. Just £10/$13 will help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. If you would like to make a new one-off donation please visit https://goto.gg/32565 where you can seemany examples of how your donation will help. If you are thinking of helping on a regular basis, matched funds are available from GlobalGiving partners for your donation if you donate for at least 4 months, e.g. a donation of £10 (US$13) per month would be worth £50 (US$65) to Tigers4Ever at month 4, including the bonus matched funds. If you are a taxpayer, living in the UK, you can make an even greater impact by adding Gift Aid to your donation (at no extra cost to you), which would mean with matched funds your £10 monthly donation could be worth £60 to Tigers4Ever after just 4 months (including bonus matched funds and Gift Aid); which would enable your donation to have 50% greater impact for wild tigers!Education is a vital component of saving wild tigers because humans have the greatest influence on the future survival of tigers in the wild. We know that educated families have fewer children.
I would like to thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food on their tables); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for the education packs we distribute.
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