It is a busy time for us at Friends for Sharks as we begin the task of approaching people in New Zealand to book events with us. This is perhaps the most significant part of our tour, given we will be spending six months in New Zealand. We wanted to choose one country during our tour that we would work within and get to know the people of in depth. It seemed an obvious choice for us to head south to the Antipodes as it is such a diverse and interesting country with a wealth of environmental awareness and people to engage with. I am really looking forward to planning this aspect of the tour in the coming months whilst we also continue to firm up arrangements with the UK, Vancouver and Cook Islands.

 

I have been squirreling away behind the scenes working on our fundraising strategies for the coming year as we pick up pace to raise money for our cause and two nominated charities, The Shark Trust and Project AWARE. It is a daunting yet exciting time and we have some great competitions coming up this winter on our Facebook page. Every penny helps us reach our target so please keep back your spare change and enter for your chance to win merchandise from our range. Entry costs will be kept purposefully low to give everyone a chance to enter and win. My favourite part of our first t-shirt competition was hearing back from the winners and knowing how pleased they were. Their enthusiasm was wonderful.

 

I am also working on our Winter Auction at the moment. We have yet to release details of this publicly and have been approaching small businesses to ask for prize donations. I am delighted to say the feedback has been positive so far (which is wonderful having written personal emails to over 60 businesses in one day…) and we are hopeful there will be some great prizes to be won.

 

All in all this is looking to be a great end to our second month of Friends for Sharks and we hope you all enjoy Halloween and a positive start to November.
Shark Pumpkin