We are very excited that Helping Rhinos has once again been selected to participate in the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2019.
Big Give Christmas Challenge is the UK’s largest online match funding campaign and is run by the Big Give online donation platform. It offers supporters of participating charities the opportunity to double their donations over a one-week period (3rd – 10th December 2019). For example, an online donation of £100 is doubled to £200 and if Gift Aid is claimed, it could be worth £225.
Thanks to generous support and match funding last year, our campaign raised £15,000 for the Zululand Rhino Orphanage, which was absolutely brilliant.
This year we are raising money to support anti-poaching operations in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Two rhinos are being killed every day in South Africa in often very brutal attacks where the rhino is shot and immobilised before having its face hacked to remove the horn. The rhino doesn’t stand a chance and in most cases they are left in excruciating pain, bleeding to death. There is often a young calf left abandoned who, if not found in time, will also die.
The horn is believed to have powers as a cure for everything from cancer to the common cold and is seen as a wonder cure in some Asian nations. This has led an insatiable demand for rhino horn on the black market. In reality, a rhino horn has no medicinal benefits; it’s made of keratin much like our fingernails and hair.
DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT WITH MATCHED GIVING
Donate between 3rd and 10th December 2019 and your donation will be matched.
`The presence of a plane in and around a rhino reserve makes a dramatic difference to visibility of our anti-poaching efforts and acts as a major deterrence for anyone attempting to poach rhino. Airwing presence is probably the most visible sign of a proactive attempt to protect rhino. Its significance is far more effective than just what the plane can see looking down; a lot of it is about what the communities can see when they look up and know that there's this capacity to visualise the rhino and their terrain from the air.`
Dr William Fowlds
Director, African Rhino Conservation Collaboration (ARCC).
Aiming High to
Protect the Last Rhinos
One of the innovative ways of protecting rhinos is the use of aerial surveillance. Helping Rhinos has teamed up with ARCC (African Rhino Conservation Collaboration) to put ‘Eyes in the Sky’ and strengthen the anti-poaching effort in the Eastern Cape.
From their small airfield and with local community experience and expertise, ARCC provides monitoring and patrol flights to more than 40,000 hectares of rhino reserves in the Eastern Cape area by:
- Putting an anti-poaching light aircraft operational over several rhino reserves in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Providing ongoing financial support to strategic anti-poaching operations in the region
- Creating sustainable opportunities where young members of the local community can be trained as pilots while providing ‘eyes in the sky’ for anti-poaching operations.
One such community member to take advantage of this opportunity is Siseko Mayinje. Siseko is of a fourth generation Xhosa family, born and raised on a farm, now a Wildlife Reserve in the Eastern Cape. Through hard work and determination, Siseko recently qualified as a commercial fixed wing pilot and was given the opportunity to combine his two passions: conservation and flying.
Helping Rhinos and ARCC would like to see more young people like Siseko take advantage of the opportunities to become ‘eyes in the sky’, but this takes money and is essential we continue to put fuel in the tank and keep the pilots in the sky at all times.
More information about this project can be found here. We hope you feel moved to support ‘Eyes in the Sky’ and we highly recommend doing so during the Big Give Christmas Challenge when your donation will be doubled and make even more of a difference.
Big Give will match donations to this project for 7 days from 12 pm on 3rd December to 12 pm on 10th December. One donation, twice the impact so please make your donation then. To donate simply go to the Big Give Christmas Challenge.
website design by brainiacmedia.net
2024 © All Rights Reserved. Website Design links