Reducing Demand for Rhino Horn in the USA

Greetings all,

We are writing to ask for your help in connecting us with middle school teachers!

Thanks for your support of our education program designed to reduce the demand for rhino horn in the third greatest consumer of rhino horn - the United States. Is this as surprising to you as it is to us? We talk with people all over the country on a regular basis, and nearly everyone is surprised at this.

However, we are a wonderfully pluralistic country, with people from all over the world. The many immigrants who come add immensely to our country in many ways, but unfortunately some are also believers in the use of rhino horn for medical purposes. Even though there is no medically viable basis for the claims, a few subscribers to Traditional Asian Medicine continue to demand the horn.

This is why we are working in communities with great numbers of Asian immigrants to work with their children. As you'll undoubtedly agree, children are hugely influential of the opinions, and more importantly, the actions of their parents. Building empathy among children and empowering them to influence their families as well as their larger communities is a core part of addressing the main motivator for why rhinos are being killed for their horn.

This is where YOU come in! Are you an educator? Do you have family who are teachers? Are any of your friends helping to shape the next generation of citizens? We’d really love you to either engage with our rhino-focused interdisciplinary curriculum designed for middle school and high school students yourself if you are a teacher. OR, if you have family or friends who are teachers, please encourage them to reach out to us!

Reply to this email and let us know that you would like to join Team Rhino and help cause a crash in the demand for rhino horn.

Yours in Loving Rhinos,

James

P.S. Did you get the bad pun in the last sentence? A group of rhino are called a crash!

Howdy all, 

It's been an interesting process here in getting our efforts to reduce demand for rhino horn to take off. Although our domestic program in the US, centered on Southern California has not been so successful, we have had great success internationally.

Domestically in the US, we have had some challenges in getting classroom teachers to adopt our curriculum, despite sending out several invitations to teachers and their principals in school districts across Southern California. We are realizing that part of this is our own fault. We made the early decision to use Google Classrooms for disseminating the materials, as that would allow teachers to communicate with each other on the bulletin board. However, we have come to realize that the Google Classroom platform, good as it is, has become a barrier for teacher adoption of the curricula.

As such, we are moving over to simply hosting the curricula on our www.helpingrhinos.org education page. Separately, we at Helping Rhinos have created a primary school curriculum and activity book that has been hugely successful, having been adopted for use by almost 100 classrooms all over the world. We have great hopes that we will meet with a bit more success in teachers adopting the curricula in this format, even if the value of the discussion boards is lost by doing so.

All that said, we have had great success internationally in spreading the message. For example, Wild Nature Institute, working in Tanzania is really interested in using our curricula in their education and outreach efforts in that lovely country. We have also been in discussions with the Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit, as their education branch called the Bush Babies in South Africa are really interested in using these innovative materials to teach. Similarly the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens is in the process of reviewing the curricula for their use in their on-grounds teaching and teacher training. 

We are optimistic and hopeful that with your help, we will help to reduce the demand for rhino horn in the US with some small tweaks to our approach - you live and you learn - and generate a generation of rhino conservationists!

Best to you all and thanks for being part of our team!