Donations to The Rhino Orphanage - 2022-2023

After visiting the Rhino Orphanage and seeing the incredible work they do, it was clear to me that I wanted to help, even if it's just a small part of it, and I have decided to donate part of the profit made from the print sales in 2022 to the orphanage.

We are losing rhinos every day to poaching for their horns, which are sold for medicinal use in Asia, even though the horns don't have any medical effect at all. They are made of keratin, and consuming them would give the same effect as biting your nails.

The poaching is so brutal and heartless to the extent that the poachers use an immobilizing drug (the same way a vet would to treat a wild animal), darting the rhino, because it's quieter than a gun, and then use axes and pangas to chop off the horn from the living rhino's face. But the brutality doesn't end there, because the horn of the rhino starts underneath their skin attached to their skull, and for the poachers to get as much of the rhino horn as possible, they dig into the face of the rhino. So when the rhino wakes up from the immobilizing drug, it wakes up without a face.

Many of these rhinos have young calves with them, which the poachers leave because they don't have big horns yet, and this is where the Rhino Orphanage comes in. They adopt these orphaned rhinos and give them the food, medical care, and protection they need, giving them a second chance in life.

During our visit to the orphanage we got to take part in the daily work of feeding and caring for the rhino calves, and I personally got very attached to one of the very young ones, a rhino calf called Balega. His name means “to run very fast” because when he was darted for capturing after his mom died, he ran faster than any rhino orphan they have ever rescued.

My future donations with parts of the profit made from print sales will be done monthly to the care and protection of Balega and the work at the Rhino Orphanage, giving Balega a second chance at life.