Welcome to a new era…..
Well I can safely say that I failed miserably at keeping this blog up to date and rather than dwell on it and feed you every excuse I can think of (of which there are many - honest) I’ll jump back on the proverbial blogging horse and try not to fail so miserably going forward. Anyone who has visited the website in the past or even read the last blog post from wayyyyyyy back in 2019 may have noticed we’ve got another new website. I should point out that a lot has gone on for Raptor Aid between then and now including one monumental thing you don’t need me to remind you of - a global pandemic!!! There I’ve said it, I won’t do it again. During the * cough * what I said earlier (probably not the best choice of word - sorry) it gave myself the chance to think about what I wanted to achieve with RA keeping our aims and objectives in mind and it became clear that some things had to change in order to progress.
So what’s the change? Well apart from the slight rebrand of the logo and redesign of the website myself and the trustee’s sat down and discussed how best to focus the charity’s efforts and because that usually falls to me to push and as the founder of the charity I went back to my old note books to see what I had written downs when I first hatched the plan of Raptor Aid as a charity. One thing I did several years ago before we had charitable status was to sponsor a Belizean national to take part in a Bird guide training course ran by the then Belize Raptor Research Institute. In the grand scheme of conservation grants it wasn’t a huge amount, maybe £250 but what was huge was the impact it had on the participants life and that’s what really struck a chord with me.
Fast forward to a few months ago where we discussed Raptor Aid’s future and I knew one thing I wanted to do was introduce a grant fund that supports individuals and projects that focus on bird of prey conservation across the globe. If you check out the new grant fund page you will hopefully pick up on how this grant fund is open to anyone, you don’t need to be a published academic or national level conservation project to get the grant fund committee’s attention. Fancy starting a nest box scheme with some friends in your community feel free to apply, starting an undergraduate degree or Master’s degree and want to focus on birds of prey that needs financial support, get in touch. As someone who has been fortunate enough to work in raptor conservation with some amazing minds we can also help advise or point you in the direction of people who can assist with your project or studies.
We can’t support everyone and there is a process that people need to follow but we are really excited to launch the grant fund. One huge success we had in 2021 was the fundraiser we ran for the Philippine Eagle Foundation which with Gift Aid smashed our target of £10,000. I will do a separate blog post about this and thank a lot of people in the process! What I realised from this fundraiser is the huge value that crowd funding has when it comes to reaching audiences, getting people to buy into something and donate to worthwhile causes - with that in mind we have set up a crowd funder for our 2022 grant fund.
Something else we have introduced to not only help support the running of the charity but also bring people together is annual membership to Raptor Aid. I have to admit that it took some persuading to go down this route at first because I had this nagging opinion that memberships were only for the big charities with huge followings. I then realised that another thing I originally wanted to achieve with the Raptor Aid was bring like minded people together - and hopefully we can make a difference.
I will of course continue visiting schools where possible and we hope to add several events and talks to our events calendar but please bear with me, I’m only one person. Our shop is loaded with things to help you learn all about birds of prey and help them in the wild - why not treat yourself and support the charity at the same time.
Let’s get this party started!
Jimmi
