Hi everyone!

So next year I have decided to travel to Thailand to volunteer at an elephant sanctuary for a week to help out with the rehabilitation of sick and injured elephants!

There aren't many people I know that don't have a soft spot for elephants, and with good reason! As a whole, elephants are emotional and complex creatures that form deep connections with friends and family and go through the same emotional range as humans such as joy, sadness and grief. Making all the more horrible when they have to go thorough what we as humans do to them.

It's thought that about 100ish years ago there were over 100,000 Asian Elephants but now, there's roughly only 35,000 - 40,000, which is only a tenth of that of the African Elephant population! The main reason why their population is dwindling is because of deforestation and poaching for live entertainment.

20% of the human population, roughly 145 million people, live in or near the average range of the Asian Elephant population meaning the the number of elephant-human conflicts is quite high. As migration routes have been disrupted, the elephants often trample crops and cause injuries and the villagers retaliate through killing them. With the world population set to double within 25 years, it is likely that this will result in a lot more elephant deaths and injuries.

As well as this, many elephants are captured and sold to entertainment industries. Many young calves are separated from their family and put through a "breaking in" process in order to make them easier to train. This involves confinement, starvation, beatings, torture, being tied up and being isolated... all with the goal to mentally break these beautiful creatures. As a result, many elephants in the entertainment industry go on shut down and start showing behaviors like swaying, pacing, even self-mutilation. (Video may be upsetting)

Luckily however, sanctuaries like the one I'm going to be at aim to save and rehabilitate any elephants that may have gone through anything that I have mentioned above. They give them the medical attention they need and teach them how to be an elephant again, and for those orphaned by poaching, they get to have a family again. And on top of all of that, they also help rescue stray and abandoned dogs as well!

While it may be hard work getting up at 5/6am each day, working till god knows what time in the evening, preparing food for 30 elephants, mucking them all out and looking after all the dogs... I couldn't think of anything better to do with my time! So please, if you can spare anything, even £1, please donate to help me get to where I need to go!

Thank you <3