Our project is now fully funded!

Dear friends,

I had to take a few hours to digest this (and faint multiple times) – our project achieved its funding target! Aaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

***small break to do a little dance***

We cannot believe it!! Thanks to all of you, we are now be able to go to Alaska and do all those things (and maybe more) we planned for the conference and the short documentary! Please subscribe on our blog and we\’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

***bigger break for more dance and a bit of singing (\”look for the beeeear necessities…\”)***

It all started with me wanting to present my dissertation at the International Conference on Bear Research and Management – to people who\’ve dedicated their whole career on bears.

Then I got accepted and I realised that Alaska was a real possibility! I was so happy..

Some of you know more about my story than others, but you can all understand that a young person that is just about to finish her degree doesn\’t exactly have funds for international travels and conference fees readily available..

So I was very much like this:

But I soon got over myself and decided to look everywhere for grants and other funding possibilities. Unfortunatelly, there were no available grants for undergraduates. They are all targeting masters and PhD researchers as it is very uncommon for an undergraduate to get invited to such a conference. I was so frustrated!

And then a few kind people guided us and helped us run a crowdfunding campaign. At the beginning we had our doubts…

But we thought we\’d give it a go. Bert and I designed this project with passion and care. We tried to make it not about us but about the joy of being a wildlife conservationist and about the amazing creatures bears are. And the sat back and waited…

And you made it happen!

We like to think that we got the incredible support that we did because people love wild things and wild places and want to see them thrive. This sends a very powerful message. We will take it with us to Alaska and use it as our main inspiration for the documentary.

We are so grateful.

The campaign will run until the deadline (30th of May), so keep sharing and talking about our project with your friends! We are using this platform to promote our blog and little film, so it would be great if we got the word out. And if anyone wants to donate, that\’s also fine!

Thank you for making it possible,

Angeliki and Bert

Update from our crowdfunding campaign – original post: https://uwe.hubbub.net/p/storiesofconservation/updates/