SATURDAY MAY 19th 9-4pm in Seton Plaza off Old Las Vegas HWY

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WorldWomenWork- Supporting women and the conservation of endangered species around the world, is holding a gigantic one-time sale in Seton Plaza! All new skirts, scarves, jewelry and eclectica from around the world. All items under $100.

All proceeds go to Save the Elephants Anti-Poaching Fund in Kenya.

A production of WorldWomenWork in conjuntion with the Annual Seton Village Yard Sale.

Don’t miss your opportunity to collect these treasures!
Call (505) 577-3802 for questions.

Singer has just sent a letter to the two ambassadors listed below and is publishing her letter so that anyone who wishes to help by doing the same can see where to write to. It is only through pressure on these ambassadors that we can hope to put a stop to the actions against Elephant Nature Park by government authorities.

Ambassador Norachit Sinhaseni
Permanent Mission of Thailand to the United Nations
351 East 52nd St.
New York, NY 10022

Ambassador Kittiphong Na Ranong
Royal Thai Embassy
1024 Wisconsin Ave N.W.
Washington D.C. 20007

Dear Ambassador Norachit Sinhaseni,

I am writing you to express my outrage at what is happening in Thailand in regard to the unwarranted raids by the DNP on the Elephant Nature Park in Mae Taeng Valley north of Chiang Mai.

Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, the founder of the Elephant Nature Foundation, is the most noble and compassionate person I know. I have been involved with the Park almost since its inception. I am on the National Council of WWF US and was on the Board for 12 years. I have my own non profit WorldWomenWork which supports women and endangered species.

I support elephant conservation both in Africa and Asia. I have been in Surin with Lek where WWW bought an elephant Bua Loi. She has a broken leg from a logging accident, begged on the streets of Bangkok and was forcibly breed. She is now in a sanctuary being loved and taken care of by Lek and her volunteers. Another elephant, Lanna, the same story of abuse but also blind in one eye the result of a sling shot, was bought by my WWW. There are more stories of cruelty but the point is that these incredible creatures have been saved from horrific conditions of abuse and now live lives of dignity.

ENP has been raided 3 times on completely false and absurd allegations that the Park was housing 70 some elephants that had illegally been taken from the wild. They didn’t find any but said they would be back . Lek’s some 30 elephants have lead terrible lives of abuse at the hands of MAN.

The cause of these raids seems to be that Lek and her colleague Edwin Wiek, the founder of Wildlife Friends Foundation, spoke out about alleged government cover-up of elephant poaching in national parks and the selling of babies to Trekking Camps.

I have raised a lot of money in the US to support Lek. Her story is extremely compelling. WWW has done a film “Losing the Elephants” about her work which has been shown at film festivals world wide. I am sickened by this and urge the government of Thailand to stop this unacceptable harassment. The tourist industry is going to suffer greatly. Thailand is such a beautiful country. I hope maybe you can do something about this. Thank you so much and I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely

Singer Rankin

WorldWomenWork empowers women and promotes the conservation of endangered species.

Even if you don’t want to write personally to these ambassadors you can help enormously by signing these petitions and get your friends to sign as well! Thanks!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/urgent-plea-for-rescued-thai-wildlife/?cid=FB_TAF

And In Defense of Animals: https://secure2.convio.net/ida/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2129

Everyone had brought paper and pencils. However, the bigger list of things that WWW has been asked to donate include footballs and netballs, uniforms, mosquito nets, solar lamps, water sterilizing equipment, sanitary towels. These will be bought in Nairobi. We visited all 8 grades and even had a musical production in our honor. WWW has previously supplied solar panels to the school.

Two of the girls painting entrance to their toilet and shower.

From there we went on a meeting with the Grevy’s Zebra women scouts who had walked and taken buses from many remote areas to meet us and have lunch and do a presentation of their puppet shows to educate local pastoralists. It was one of the highlights of the trip.

These incredible women track the zebra using GPS equipment. They live in such a wild part of northern Kenya. You wonder how anything can live. A goat had been bought and killed for lunch in honor of this meeting. We had a delightful picnic packed by E W. It was an amazing day and a treat for me to show what WWW is doing in remote areas of the world! We also presented a check for $10,000 to the Grevy’s Zebra Trust.

If you would like details of our 2013 trip to Africa just email us or sign up to our newsletter!

The highlight of our safari was 5 days spent in wild and beautiful Samburu at Oria Douglas- Hamilton’s Elephant Watch Camp and Iain’s Save The Elephants (Iain at at breakfast in Elephant Watch Camp with our WorldWomenWork Group)

Oria’s tented safari camp (see video above) is perched on the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro River beneath wide spreading Kigelia trees and Acacias where vervet monkeys play. It is one of the most magic places I know – showers under the stars, lunches surrounded by elephants, dinner lit by many candles and stars always in a different place. The combination of spending hours with the elephants Iain has studied for 10 years and the Samburu who are our guides and hosts is a not to be believed experience. No words can explain the exhilaration and emotion of seeing and being close to an elephant family. You truly feel one with the natural world, something many of us have lost, and return home with many new friends and an added appreciation of other cultures and the fragility of species whom we revere!

Unfortunately, there is a sad side to this beauty. I was asked to bring 3 bullet finders which locate bullets in a carcass, a GPS with camera and flashlights among other things that WWW has donated to Save The Elephants for anti poaching efforts. The battle for elephants rages fueled by the insatiable Chinese demand for ivory. WWW and Swell Pictures are doing a short film for film festivals worldwide on the poaching crisis.

This was a perfect opportunity to do a few interviews with David Daballen, one of Iain’s research assistants (above).

The first was conducted around the carcass of a magnificent bull, “Pretty Boom Boom”. Various bones and his head had been moved around by members of his family as part of their mourning process. The second was spontaneous one morning when we ran into a family whose matriarchs had all been shot. A 22 year old was left to care for the orphans – one a baby, skin and bones, who needs milk to survive.

Bernard Lesirin (above) spoke of the trauma a baby elephant feel when its mother is killed and Iain did a follow up to a previous interview.

Even though the poaching is horrendous it is important to know about as it makes the times spent with elephants even more moving. As one person said ” it was life changing.”

We raised $15,000 for Save The Elephants!

In the next post we visit one of the graduates of our Westgate School Scholarship Program and spend a day with the lady scouts of the Grevy’s Zebra Trust.

If you haven’t already signed our petition to stop the brutal killing of African elephants, the link is here -

https://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-brutal-killing-of-african-elephants

Please share with your friends and urge them to sign the petition. And donations are always gratefully received!

https://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-brutal-killing-of-african-elephants

Film Update
WorldWomenWork and Swell Pictures are in the process of producing a film on the crisis and have done and are doing a number of interviews, including Crawford Allen, Director of TRAFFIC, North America,  Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Founder and CEO Save the Elephants,  Carter Roberts, President and CEO World Willdlife  Fund U.S.,  Ginette Hemley, Senior Vice President, Conservation and Science. We will be announcing the release date of the film as soon as we have one. Watch this space!

Kathryn Schumacher Designs grew out of Kathryn’s twenty-three years as an Interior Designer with projects in California, New Mexico, New York, Washington, Florida and Illinois.  She loves color, textiles, patterns, artistic detail and travel, all of which provide inspiration for her decorative pillow collections.

Kathryn has been friends with Singer for over 15 years and jumped at the recent opportunity to travel with Singer to her beloved Africa.  As a result of this trip Kathryn was inspired to create a selection of beautiful African oriented pillows exclusively for WorldWomenWork. Kathryn was struck by their vivacious spirit and the pride with which they wore their brightly colored and patterned clothing. “It was a life-changing trip,” Kathryn said. “We realized that, for people like us with so much, how little it takes to change other lives for the better.”

We are thrilled with this wonderful collaboration and delighted that we can participate in the debut of Kathryn’s stunning new Africa collection. The African pillows debut for sale this month at the WorldWomenWork website (www.worldwomenwork.org) and at www.kathrynschumacher.com.

All the designs are individual one-offs – check them out – and tell your friends!

It is an incredibly well run school.

From there we went on to the fish farm which is spectacular – 3 ponds holding 9000 fish each.  Stanley, the founder, is an amazing guy. The ladies caught fish for our dinner. We met with Isaiah who coordinates all the local projects. What a man!

We visited the clinic and school in Chiawa. It was decided on the spot by my group at the school to refurbish the girls dormitory.  Mattresses on the floor are all they have and a toilet somewhere behind the occasional bush. We are funding new double decker beds, glass in the windows and a new toilet building. The girls will paint the inside and out. I won’t go into any more detail since we were updated in great detail at the board meeting. We were highly impressed by all the projects.

You come away after meeting  the people involved  with such admiration for everything they do. I feel it is so important to make people realize who have so much what little it takes to change peoples lives.

Cherri and Richard you are amazing. And to top everything as we were approaching shore at your camp for drinks there appear a family of elephants with babies coming down to drink.