The Practice for the Elephants Contest has ended and my piano students have done a great job, practicing during the month of May, with lots of minutes of practicing to raise money to continue to foster our 10 elephant orphans—orphaned because of illegal poaching for their parents’ ivory tusks.

We still need two more matching donors for two of the students:
Keep reading to find out how you can become a matching donor!
Please see below to find out about our charity.

About the contest:

Students earn two cents for every minute practiced over the course of 4 weeks. At the end, we total up the minutes to figure out how much each student has raised. Students’ sponsors can be parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends of the family.

Students also have matching donors: paired with one of my students, you’ll match what that student earned practicing, most kids earn between $10–20.

So far we have matching donors for all but 2 students. Can you match what they earn? The kids are so excited that their contribution will be doubled! Our goal is to raise enough to continue to foster our 10 baby elephants. (It’s $50 a year per elephant baby.)

If you’d like to be a matching donor for a great cause, please contact me and I will pair you up with a student! 

Meet One of Our Elephants

The story of one of our baby elephants, Kauro.

Why Pianos and Elephants?

As pianists we are very aware of the history of using ivory for piano keys and that the manufacture of pianos once contributed to the trade in ivory. But today, piano technicians use polymers and mixtures of plastics to create the look and feel of ivory for our piano keys, bypassing entirely the illegal trade in ivory elephant tusks.

Where Our Donations Go

The donations collected go to sponsor abandoned baby elephant cubs whose mother or father was killed from illegal poaching of ivory in Africa. The orphaned baby elephants are raised and kept safe for later release by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya where it operates the Tsavo East National Park.

Click here for more details on the contest and on the Foundation.
Please also visit the The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website.
You can also follow the Trust on Facebook.
Here’s another website, iworry.org, where you can take action toward ending the ivory trade.

This wonderful and amazing contest was created by fellow piano instructor, Penny Lazarus.