Monday, May 09, 2005
The Eastern Canada Tour
Now that the announcement has been made in the CARCNET newsletter, I'll post it here as well.
We are partnering with the Canadian Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Network (
www.carcnet.ca) to present our programs throughout eastern Canada this summer! Though the scope of the tour remains to be determined, we hope to spend some time in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and PEI promoting reptile conservation at parks, libraries, museums, summer camps, and other venues. We've never taken our program east of Ottawa before, so we're looking forward to covering some new territory! If you have any suggestions regarding locations we should include in our program schedule, feel free to send us the info.
Why the partnership with CARCNET? We're members of this fine organization ourselves, and we support their goals of reptile and amphibian conservation in Canada. One of their aims is to undertake public education that raise awareness about reptiles and amphibians, so it is natural that we would want to assist them with this. Of course, we also hope to find some new members amongst the crowds at our shows! Another reason is related to the logistics of organizing such a tour. We have always operated on a fee-for-service basis in the past, mostly to avoid the long-term difficulties associated with funding instability that many groups face. However, to organize an extended tour efficiently over such long distances, we need to make it very affordable (even better- free!) for all of the venues. This means we need external funding, and by partnering with a charitable organization such as CARCNET we are able to access a larger pool of funding resources.
So the scope of this tour will be largely dependent upon the outcome of our fundraising campaign- any assistance with this is appreciated! We've had good luck so far with some individual donations and in-kind contributions, but not much luck with corporate sponsorship. What more could a company want- smiling, happy kids learning about species at risk in a variety of settings over thousands of kilometres with extensive media coverage and on-line interactivity?
Posted by Jeff Hathaway at 9:55 AM | Comments (2)
