Our Elephant Bank

Sunday, March 13th was Thai National Elephant Day.  Every year since this day was appointed in 1998, the national animal of Thailand, the elephant, is celebrated.  The event is a way to bring public awareness to this magnificent creature, and to increase conservation efforts worldwide.  Here in Denver, the zoo put on an event recognizing this great holiday.  In true Thai fashion, the two female Asian elephants, Mimi and Dolly, were offered a feast of gigantic proportions.  In Thailand, the elephants are honored with banana trees, sugar cane and LOTS of fruit.

                                            Photo courtesy of http://www.thaiphotoblogs.com

 As many of you know, the Denver Zoo is building a 50 million dollar Asian Tropics exhibit, which will be home to Asian elephants, rhinos, tapirs, otters, leopards, gibbons and more.  They are about half way through the construction, and are on time to be opening next spring.  Obviously fund raising for this amazing project is no easy feat.  This past Sunday, while Thai National Elephant Day was celebrated, the zoo kicked off a Kid's Campaign to encourage children to do their part to raise much needed money.  More info can be found at http://denverzoo.org/AT/how_you_can_help/kids/index.html .  The Brown family couldn't attend (we had a very important birthday party to attend), but I decided we could participate at home.  
The zoo is giving out paper elephant banks, and asking that kids fill the banks and return them to the zoo.  It is a great way to get the community involved, and a fantastic way for kids to make a difference.  Since we couldn't head to the zoo on Sunday, I asked Ben if he wanted to make our own bank here at home.  I explained to him that the money he would put in the bank would help pay for the elephants new exhibit.  Ben's response was "I can HELP PAY for their exhibit?!  COOL!"
I located an empty jar, and we got to work.  Instead of printing the suggested graphic from the zoo website (http://denverzoo.org/downloads/at_build_bank.pdf), we decorated it with paper, stamps and stickers.  (Nothing against the graphic, my printer is just about out of ink). 

We titled ours "Pennies for Elephants".  Of course the first order of business was finding some pennies to start us off.  Ben and I headed to the office, and located the change jar amongst Daddy's things.  Ben was so funny about raiding the jar- he acted as though he was being sneaky, and I had to assure him it was okay to take Daddy's pennies.

At my niece's birthday party on Sunday, I allowed Ben to take the jar with him.  He asked friends and family if they had any pennies to donate.  He was very shy about it, but I could tell he was very pleased with himself.  I am very proud of Ben, and his desire to help out with Asian Tropics.  Once the jar is full, we will take it to the zoo, and he should get a poster with Mimi and Dolly on it for his efforts.  Who knows, maybe we can fill it more than once.  Either way, I feel good knowing that my son is participating in something much larger than himself, and having a good time in the process.