I am trying out something new this month: I am hosting a fundraising event!
The event will take place on December 21st in San Francisco in the Randall Museum. We’ll show a BBC movie about elephants in Sri Lanka (trailer) and my friend Shermin de Silva will give a talk about her work with these same elephants.
Shermin de Silva
Shermin de Silva
Shermin is an inspiring woman. She runs a field station in Sri Lanka, works in the United States (she is a postdoc in Fort Collins) and manages to raise enough money to keep her research going. This, as you can imagine, is not easy!
Her research is interesting, because she is one of few people who follows individual elephants in a wild Asian elephant population over time. Because she and her field crew know the individual elephants, they can see when elephant friendships form and break. It turns out that Asian elephants have a very different social structure than African elephants (see De Silva et al 2011).
Because I think that Shermin is doing great work that deserves our support, I joined the non-profit which she set up (Trunks and Leaves) as a board member. To contribute a little more to the non-profit I decided to organize a fundraising event.
Now, I have never done fundraising before, so I am learning lots! Plus, I am used to organizing events for scientists, but this event is for everybody, so that means that there is more for me to learn.
Do you want to help?
If you would like to come to the event, that would be great! Tickets are for sale here: http://elephants.brownpapertickets.com/. The money we make by selling tickets goes directly to the non-profit Trunks and Leaves (a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit based in the United States).
If you can’t make it to the event, maybe you want to send us a few dollars anyways? All donations, large or small, are very welcome and a few dollars go a long way in Sri Lanka. Donations can be made easily and safely through paypal here.
I’d also be very happy if you could share this information with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
If you would like to offer help in another way, send me a message at pleuni “at” stanford. edu.
Being A Better Scientist 