Teya's Terrific Tiger Tale

I first decided to help save the tigers actually sitting in my dentist's waiting room! I was reading one of the old magazines and found an article about tiger extinction. I'd loved tigers before but had never really known how few there were left in the world or for that matter thought about raising money to help them. At the end of the article there was a list of all the different tiger charities. I took a note of some and when I got home I went and looked on some of the websites. A particular one popped up, working to save tigers in South China. There are only 10 to 30 South China tigers left in the wild, and around 60 in captivity!!!!!

I decided to e-mail them asking for more info. They wrote back almost straight away and I told them that there was a christmas fair coming up soon and that I was going to set up a stall and give all the money to their charity. I made lots of jewelry to sell and it was a big success.

Later on I sent all the money to the charity and they sent me back a huge gift pack filled with stickers, fridge magnets, bookmarks etc...There was also a letter. The letter said that they had adopted a tiger in my name , and they had given me a certificate, a photo of my tiger and lots of information on him. My tiger's name is Gonggong and I have stuck his photo up on my wall.

Meanwhile I have done another stall which had lots of other different things for sale (i.e. papier mache pots, handmade paper photo albums, old jewelry that I don't want anymore and again homemade jewelry) which I raised even more money for and again I sent the money to the charity. The best thing of all is that it's really fun to do and when people see that you're doing it for charity they're even more willing to buy things. Some people just donated money anyway without buying anything! So what I'm saying is: have a go, it's fun and good for the environment at the same time and people really appreciate it when they see other people giving their spare time to help look after the world.

The website of this charity is: www.savechinastigers.org

Please have a look, and if you care that there are less than 100 tigers left in South China, maybe you could do something too.

Love Teya.