We told you in December how difficult it was proving to raise sufficient funds to meet our target to change the lives of young children living with wild tigers and create the next generation of wild tiger protectors. We are now delighted to say that thanks to a fantastic response from 4 of our supporters we will be able to provide education packs for at least 35 children living with wild tigers, to enable them to go to school in 2019-2020. Although we would dearly love to do more, we are grateful that we can at least help the children in one small village in Bandhavgarh this summer. We are still planning to have some offline fundraising events in April 2019 where we hope to boost donations through face-to-face contact and other fundraising initiatives, before finalising the orders for the education packs for distribution this year.
We also hope that some of our supporters may be planning to give something up for Lent (06 March 2019 – 20 April 2019) this year and maybe get some friends to sponsor their quest whilst fundraising to help us save wild tigers via the new fundraiser page option at GlobalGiving. Please use this link: https://www.globalgiving.org/dy/v2/fundraisers/start/?fundraiser.projids=32565 to set up your own fundraiser page, if you are interested in becoming a Fundraiser for Tigers4Ever and would like to help us to send young children living with wild tigers to school.
Although we have made some fundraising progress for this project over the last few months, we still have some way to go if we are to deliver at least as many education packs to children living with wild tigers as we did in 2018. A further £1116 (US$1496) is still needed if we are to achieve this goal.
We will now turn our attention to identifying a small village which has suffered due to human-animal conflict in recent months; this could be due to loss of crops (raided by herbivores) or loss of livestock (due to predator attacks). Our experience has shown 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. Our Anti-Poaching Patrols receive this information too so that they can keep a watchful eye on potential high risk situations for wild tigers. We have also found that providing assistance in affected villages helps inhabitants to love tigers and other wildlife again, thereby reducing the risk of retaliatory actions. This year, we will have 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 mentioned in our last report, 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 contents for inclusion in the Tigers4Ever education packs from local suppliers around the wild tiger territory, and create employment for those who wrap the education packs and deliver them to our Indian representatives for distribution.
Climate change and some unseasonable weather conditions continue to make life difficult for everyone living in and around Bandhavgarh, including the tigers and other wildlife. These challenges are leading to more instances where humans and wildlife have nothing to eat, thus increasing the likelihood of human-animal conflict as both compete for the same scarce resources. Even without attacks on livestock by predators including tigers and leopards, the villages are plagued by langur monkeys and other animals which raid their crops. Low crop yields leave uneducated villagers with little money for food and few employment prospects, so they turn to picking tendu leaves (for Indian tobacco) and mahua flowers (for the manufacture of local alcohol), and harvest honeycombs from the scarce forest resources. The villagers only make a pittance in income from these dangerous activities whilst the risk of conflict with a tiger or other predator 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.
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 also know that educated families have fewer children. We still hope to provide education packs for at least 220 children in the villages around Bandhavgarh in time for the start of the new school year in July 2019, but we will only be able to do this if we can raise sufficient funds, a further £1116 (US$1496) is still needed for this. Remember just £10/$13 will help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. So, if you a thinking of becoming a Tigers4Ever fundraiser, your challenge can be big or small. 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 4 months (including bonus matched funds and Gift Aid); which would enable your donation to have 50% greater impact for wild tigers!
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.
Links:
Although we were able to change the lives of 220 children living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh in the summer of 2018, fundraising for this project has proved extremely difficult this year, so we are now looking at other ways to fund and continue this vital wild tiger conservation project in 2019 and beyond.
Since 2012, we have been providing educational resources and scholarships for children living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh. In six years we have changed the lives of many people by providing educational opportunities for 2020 children in 24 of the villages most frequently impacted by human-tiger conflict. Our impact doesn’t just make a difference for the children and their parents in the villages which benefit from our distribution of education packs. Our work creates an impact on the wider tiger community around Bandhavgarh too, as we have sourced over 30000 contents for inclusion in Tigers4Ever education packs from local suppliers around this wild tiger territory, whilst creating employment for those who wrap the education packs and deliver them to our Indian representatives for distribution (we arrange for the packs to be individually wrapped and labelled in brown paper and don’t use plastics because of the negative impact these would have on the environment. The paper can be recycled, used for other purposes or burnt on the cooking fires used in the villages).
As we mentioned in our previous newsletters, 2018 has been a difficult year for everyone living in and around Bandhavgarh, including the tigers and other wildlife. This is largely due to the long-term impact of poor rainfall in three successive monsoon seasons leading to drought, poor crop yields and in some cases crop failure. When humans and wildlife have nothing to eat, conflict inevitably arises as both need to live from the same scarce resources. Even without attacks on livestock by predators such as tigers, leopards, wild dogs and wild boar, the villagers are plagued by langur monkeys, birds and deer which raid their crops. When the crop yield is low, uneducated villagers have few employment prospects, so they enter the forests to pick tendu leaves (for Indian tobacco) and mahua flowers (for the manufacture of local alcohol), and harvest honeycombs (for their precious honey to sell, although this also brings humans into conflict with sloth bears and angry honey bees!). The income from these enterprises is very low whilst the risk of conflict with a tiger or other predator is very high. The villages need to collect 5000 tendu leaves just to earn Rs.125 (around £1.50/$1.75). As we have previously reported, such conditions put extreme financial pressures on people living with tigers and when faced with the prospect of buying basic materials for their children to go to school or feeding the family, the latter will always win, of course.
We include education in our programmes because humans have the greatest influence on the future survival of tigers in the wild and because we know that educated families have fewer children. Tigers4Ever would like to provide education packs for more children in the villages around Bandhavgarh in time for the start of the new school year in July 2019, but in order to fund this we must look to get some help with offline fundraising activities and would like to invite suggestions from you as to how you can help us to make a difference for wild tigers with a fundraising challenge either pre-Christmas or in January 2019 as part of your New Year resolution. Please email us with your ideas or if you need any help raising awareness of your fundraising activity. Remember just £10/$13 will help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. So your challenge can be big or small. Thank you in anticipation.
We are still £2410 ($3180) short of our target to get education packs to send children living with wild tigers to school (https://goto.gg/32565). We hope that we can raise sufficient funds to cover these costs and keep the progress we have made to date going. If we can reach our target then we can help another 280 children to have an opportunity to become a future protector of wild tigers.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children which we have helped to get an education (and their families who will also have food on the table); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for the education packs we distribute.
Links:
In our last report, we told you about the impact we had in the villages of Ranchha and Dobha, where the young children living with wild tigers were afforded the opportunity to go to school thanks to the education packs donated by Tigers4Ever. We also mentioned how, thanks to our collaboration with GTCS (Global Tiger Conservation Society), a local charity based in Bandhavgarh, we are able to reach out and assist children living with wild tigers who do not have access to a school in their villages. These children are faced with either walking to another village (often 10 km or more away from their home) to go to school or not going to school at all. The walk isn’t an easy one because it is through the forests where wild tigers, leopards and other wildlife roam, so in many cases these children don’t go to school, instead they work in the fields tending the crops grown by their families or looking after the livestock which provide income from milk sales when the crops are exhausted or fail. Worse still, some of these small children are sent into the forest to collect wood to build fires for cooking or heating their homes in the colder months. Reaching out to these children, to deliver education is therefore a real challenge.
Our friends, at GTCS, help to make this possible by visiting these remote villages and running “pop-up schools” where nature education and basic literacy skills are taught to all who can attend. In these “pop-up schools”, the children often sit on the floor in a communal building or if unavailable, a sheltered part of the village close to the edge of the forest will provide an alternative learning area. The children gather around eager to see what they will be given, in order to help the maximum number of children GTCS sometimes split the education parks giving a few pencils or pens and other writing materials to each child. Books, like our ecology books, Hindi-English dictionaries and the books which aid the learning of basic literacy and numeracy skills are often shared between two or more students so that more can have an opportunity to learn. This Summer the pop-up schools were in the villages of Rakhi, Jamunra and Mala and thanks to some of our supporters in the USA we have also been able to distribute some socks and shoes to the children in these villages (socks and shoes were collected by supporters in the USA and sent directly to India for distribution amongst the children).
We continue to include education in our programmes because the humans who live with wild tigers will have the greatest influence on the future survival of them in the wild; and because we know that educated families have fewer children. We were delighted to be able to provide 55 education packs and ecology books for distribution at the “Pop-up Schools” run in association with GTCS, a lack of donations has meant that it has been impossible to do more this year. We have collaborated with GTCS for 2 years; and are delighted to see the impact of our work in some of the poorest rural locations which do not have a village school or easy access to a neighbouring one. Tigers4Ever would have liked to provide education packs for more children in the villages around Bandhavgarh, but even with pooled funds from our offline fundraising activities we were only able to provide 220 education packs so far this year.
Just £10/$13 would help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. Yet this amount eludes most of the families we meet in most of the villages because their income has been severely impacted by a lack of rainfall reducing their income from crop and milk sales together with the need to buy food to keep their families alive. It must be almost unbearable to live in temperatures of 50°C (122°F) for 4 months with no air conditioning, no electricity and no running water, let alone manage to feed a family of 6 or more from an income of just £5.50 (US$7.30) per week. For those children we help to get an education there is the prospect of paid employment as a protector of wild tigers, where they could earn £23 (US$31) per week. For the unfortunate ones, the struggle to survive on the meagre offerings they can gain from crop farming and milk sales is probably what awaits them.
We are still £2412 ($3184) short of our target for education packs to send for children living with wild tigers (https://goto.gg/32565). We hope that we can raise sufficient funds to cover these costs and keep the progress we have made to date going. If we can reach our target then we can help another 280 children to have an opportunity to become a future protector of wild tigers rather than putting increased pressure on the already fragile habitat.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children which we have helped to get an education (and their families who will also have food on the table); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for the education packs we distribute.
Links:
Thanks to the amazing support we have received from you since this project launched in April 2018, we have been able to change the lives of 220 children living with wild tigers in Bandhavgarh and we hope to continue this success throughout the remainder of the year and in future years too.
It has been 6 years since we last visited Ranchha and Dobha villages, in the Kithauli buffer zone. Here villagers frequently suffer loss of livestock when tigers or leopards strike during the day or night. 2018 has been a hard year for everyone living in Bandhavgarh because the 2017 monsoon only delivered 40% of the expected rainfall meaning that there has been a severe drought and countless forest fires destroying everything in their wake since the end of January. Such conditions put extreme financial pressures on people living with tigers and when faced with the prospect of buying basic materials for their children to go to school or feeding the family, the latter will always win, of course.
We include education in our programmes because humans have the greatest influence on the future survival of tigers in the wild and because we know that educated families have fewer children. We wanted to see how our work had impacted the villages since 2012 and to help the current crop of young children to go to school. In 2012 there were 125 children in Ranchha and 75 children in Dobha, so we arrived in Dobha village with 220 education packs expecting to see a few more children this time around. Some of the older children we helped in 2012 are now adults and married; to our surprise our efforts with education seem to be helping to impact the number of children more quickly than expected as we witnessed a 27% fall in number to 55. The children gathered eagerly to collect their education packs and thanked us before we left. We then drove to Ranchha where we again expected more children than in 2012; again we found a decrease in the number of children with a fall of 12% since 2012 to 110. We were delighted to see this helpful impact and to still have 55 education packs for distribution at the “Pop-up Schools” run in association with GTCS (Global Tiger Conservation Society), a local charity based in Bandhavgarh. We have collaborated with GTCS for 2 years; and are delighted to see the impact of our work in some of the poorest rural locations which do not have a village school or easy access to a neighbouring one.
Although the observed decreases in population are small, they are important for the long term future of wild tigers because it will reduce the pressure on the forest from human encroachment, illegal woodcutting and the gathering of precious forest resources to provide food for livestock. Perhaps, more importantly, it will impact future family sizes too as more children gain an education and learn about the impact of the human footprint of the ecology and climate of their planet.
Tigers4Ever would have liked to provide education packs for more children in the villages around Bandhavgarh in time for the start of the new school year on 02 July 2018, but once we’d pooled funds from our offline fundraising activities and the GlobalGiving Campaign we were only able to help 220 children this June.
Just £10/$13 would help us to provide education packs for 3 of the youngest group of children living with wild tigers. Yet this amount eludes most of the families we met in the villages of Ranchha and Dobha because their income has been severely impacted by a lack of rainfall reducing their income from crop and milk sales together with the need to buy food to keep their families alive. We can only imagine how hard it would be to live in temperatures of 50°C (122°F) for 4 months with no air conditioning, no electricity and no running water, let alone managing to feed a family of 6 or more from an income of just £5.50 (US$7.30) per week. For those children we help to get an education there is the prospect of paid employment as a protector of wild tigers, where they could earn £23 (US$31) per week.
We are £2412 ($3184) short of our current target for education packs to send for children living with wild tigers (https://goto.gg/32565). We hope that we can raise sufficient funds to cover these costs and keep the progress we have made to date going. If we can reach our target then we can help another 280 children to have an opportunity to become a future protector of wild tigers.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children which we have helped to get an education (and their families who will also have food on the table); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing equipment for the education packs we distribute.
Links:
Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.
We'll only email you new reports and updates about this project.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
