Progress Report for June, 2018

Now on this trip I was not only able to introduce my friends to Naledi, my little orphaned elephant, but I was also able to introduce them to the team at Elephant Havens. The girls have made great plans to help raise funds for our projects—starting with a lemonade stand in the near future. They also want to clean their area parks like we are doing in our Saturday Sweeps project.

Scott and I are so proud of the work Bee and Taps are doing, and we are looking forward to future accomplishments. I was able to meet with the architect and review the plans. We’re now waiting on the final revisions. Taps and Bee are in the process now of drilling the water wells, and that should be complete by the end of this week. This is all so exciting and will help immensely when we are able to start building the staff quarters and elephant enclosures.

Your support has already made a difference in the lives of the people in the area. We do Saturday Sweeps every Saturday. We buy refreshments and provide Elephant Havens t-shirts, and the volunteers pick up litter at a designated area for the week. We are supplying trash cans for those areas in order to keep them clean. We have new faces that show up every week, and we’re also involving the school children as one of the areas is directly across from the local school. Our aim is to educate the local community of the need to stop pollution. The areas we select are on the rivers and the rubbish, mostly plastic, is getting into the river systems. This can cause great harm not only to the water but to the wildlife that depends on it. It was just announced last week that Botswana is banning plastic bags beginning November 1st. The government is very happy with our initiative to help clean up and teach the locals the importance of not littering.

Thank you again for all the support and contributions. Please don’t forget that we still need funds to complete the building. I want to assure you that every dollar goes directly to the Elephant Havens project and is well spent. We could never do this without your support. Please tell all your friends and family who might be interested in donating to our cause to visit ElephantHavens.org to learn more about what we’re doing and how they can make a difference.

Sincerely,

Debra Stevens