This crowdfunding project aims to raise enough money to cover the costs of setting up the Size of England campaign. Our amazing new charity will work to raise £13 million to safeguard 13 million hectares of rainforest. That's the size of England and, coincidentally, the area of forest that is cut down every year around the world.
Safeguarding rainforest is not about buying land, it is about empowering local people to use the rainforest sustainably - in ways which are good for biodiversity, good for communities and good for the planet. There are many ways in which we can do this. It might be about helping to establish local peoples' rights to their land, it might be providing communities with fuel efficient stoves to reduce their need to cut down wood or it might involve instigating tree planting programs to restore degraded habitats and provide new sources of income for local people.
We know that Size of England can be successful. Last year, the Size of Wales team reached their target of raising £2 million to safeguard 2 million hectares of rainforest .
Right now we need £5,500 to get things going. Before we do all this wonderful work, we need to set up the charity, get registered, and do all those (boring but important) legal things that are necessary to ensure the charity is above board and proper. We hope, through communication that we can raise the sum whilst also spreading the word of what we want to do, and getting people to 'like', 'follow' and 'friend' the project as it develops.
At the moment there are three of us, all volunteers, who have been working on this idea for the last year or so. We have already received amazing support from organisations such as Cool Earth, the Prince's Rainforest Project and WWF, and now we want to inspire you to support us too.
Can you help the Size of England campaign in other ways? Are you a great fundraiser? Could you improve our website? Have you got legal experience? We'd love to crowd-source skills as well as cool, hard cash.
If you can give us some cash, we'll be absolutely cock-a-hoop, and we'll reward you for your generosity:
- for £1 to £5 you will get our sincere thanks, and the hope that you pass the message on to as many people as you can (and you don't even need an ice bucket!) - it would be great to think we could raise this £5,500 by means of 5,500 single pound donations, so that we spread the word as wide as possible!
- up to £25 you'll get even more thanks by means of a mention on our Twitter & Facebook sites.
- between £25 and £50 we will send you five amazing images to use as desktop/mobile phone wallpapers from our first partner organisations alongside regular updates from the conservation projects themselves.
- between £50 and £100 you'll get all of the above plus an invite to our official launch party (nothing fancy, but Mark's vol-au-vents are to die for)
- and for anything more than £100 we would like to invite you along to the first project that we sponsor.