The Savannah Project

 Beverly in Africa, 2006. 

This month is honor of my Aunt Beverly. Someone who had a love for Africa, and all the animals there. One of the last trips she took was to Africa with my Auntie Shelli, Uncle Herbie, and cousin Aly. While in Africa they went on a safari where they saw tons of animals. When they got back from their trip my Aunt Beverly showed me tons of photos of Africa, and tons of photos of the safari. While they were on the safari they saw some lions. This months charity goes to help the lions in Africa. 

Beverly with a tribe in Africa, 2006. 

I decided to research the lions and found interesting facts about the lion population in Africa now. A century ago there were more than 200,000 lions living in Africa and now according to Panthera, there are 20,000 lions left in Africa. They have completely vanished from 90% of their historic range, and are extinct in 26 African countries. The lions have made their way on to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) "Red List of Threatened Species" because they can now be thought of as critically endangered. Lions habitats are being threatened by illegal bushmeat trade, trophy hunting, and fragmentation. 

Photo of lioness taken by Beverly in Africa, 2006.

    

In doing research on lions I stumbled upon Savannah Co., this is a company that makes handcrafted bracelets with a lion head bead in the middle. The bracelets are made out of stone, and have a single gold, silver, or rose gold lion head bead in the middle. 

Bracelet from Savannah Co. 

    

Savannah Co. gathers 10% of their profits at the end of each month and gives it to the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN). WCN works to help save wildlife by helping conservationists build lasting connections with established organizations. WCN has set up a specific project called Nissa, to help the lions in the National reserve of Mozambique. Donations to the project help provide radio collars to track the lions, vehicles, and education so everyone has the appropriate training necessary to work in the reserve.  WCN has another project set up in Kenya called Ewaso to help the lions. Donations given to Ewaso go towards equipment (GPS to detect human-predator conflicts), operations (providing internet to those working in the field), providing education to local secondary students. 

I chose to support the lions by purchasing a bracelet from Savannah Co. Wearing the bracelet will be a reminder of lions, and how much they now need help in order to survive in their natural habitats. 

The bracelet from Savannah Co. 

    

The bracelet from Savannah Co. 

You can help by purchasing a bracelet from http://savannahco.com or you can make a donation directly to http://wildnet.org. 

Sources:
http://savannahco.com/pages/about-us
http://wildnet.org/what-we-do
https://www.panthera.org/cat/lion

Welcome!

I would like to start by welcoming you to my blog. This blog is called “ Bigger Than Me”, and in this blog I am going to share with you different charities that I have found, and how I have chosen to support them, and how you could support them in different ways.  

I have decided to call this blog “Bigger Than Me”, because we live in a world where it is easy to forget what we have and lose sight of what is really important. I was and am fortunate enough to live a very privileged life, and I forget to take time to be thankful for what I have and appreciate it all. I feel like there is more that I can do for the world, and more I can do to help the world.  

My New Year’s resolution is to support different charities each month in different ways, whether it’s buying merchandise from their website or making a donation directly to the charity.

This is my way of doing something more for the community, and the world in which I live. This is my of doing something “Bigger Than Me”.