World Lion Day Fundraising 2026
World Lion Day is celebrated on the 10th August and has been recognised since 2013 and is the busiest time of year for us. It is fortunately placed right in the middle of the UK school holiday period where we are based so makes it a great time to work with our zoo partners around the country on various fundraising events to raise money for our conservation projects.
This year we were very fortunate to have the support of several zoo partners and were involved in fundraising and educational awareness events across the month all over the country. Over the last few weeks our trustees and education advisors have been working behind the scenes on a new educational trail for children at the zoo over the summer holidays. This trail focuses on lions and other animals found throughout Kenya and has been designed for primary school children aged 6-11. On the 28th July we delivered 500 of these activity packs off. Keeper Kieran was on hand to test the trail for us and we think that he enjoyed himself, we hope that families coming to the zoo throughout the summer will do too! This has been a huge effort from the wider Safina team with lots of input on the educational elements and design to the packaging of 500 individual packs. We are so pleased with the end result and offer huge thanks to everyone involved. These trail packs are now on sale at the zoo for a £1.50 donation which will go towards the sponsorship of Lion Guardian Kisimir in collaboration between us and Linton Zoo. While at the zoo trustee James also gave a talk to visitors about lion conservation, with many visitors interested in our new replica GPS collar. Huge thanks to Zoo Director Kim Simmons for her support in setting all of this up.
On the weekend of the 8th/9th August staff at the Cotswold Wildlife Park & Gardens ran their World Lion Day event for the fourth year running which saw members of the team talking to the visitors about lion conservation whilst selling lion related items at their fundraising stall. This was their most successful year of fundraising yet at this event and £2,018 was donated towards our conservation projects. This is the largest single donation that we have ever received. Since 2023 we have now received over £5,000 from the park from fundraising events and over £1,500 from staff run sponsorship events. We are very grateful to all of the staff involved in supporting our work. While at the Park we also had a chance encounter with one of the team from the non profit organisation Protecting African Lions who showed an interest in our fundraising campaign to sponsor a GPS collar through KopeLion. We were delighted that they sent us a £500 donation towards this. We would like to send our thanks to the team at P.A.L and wish them all the best in their mission to protect the African Lion.
On the 10th August (World Lion Day!) we visited Noah's Ark Zoo Farm where we talked to guests about lion conservation with our replica GPS collar proving very interesting among their visitors of all ages! We also joined Keeper Emily for a lion talk where trustee James talked about the threats that lions face in the wild and how we are working with others to protect and monitor wild lions. All together £40 was raised in donations.
On 11th August trustee James and Education Advisor Maddie headed to Folly Farm Adventure Park & Zoo for their World Lion Day Event. As always this was a brilliant event and much anticipated by us throughout the year! The zoo has a wonderful in built education room in their lion house which makes it the perfect place to engage with visitors in all weathers. Conservation Officer Jack is key to the success here and his hard work in creating engaging and interesting interpretation works so well in making sure people learn as they donate. Instead of a traditional raffle Jack created a battleships style fundraising game, where players look for lions within the landscape, with a prize guaranteed each time. Volunteer Kandice assisted us again this year and created some wonderful craft packs which went down very well with visitors. Keepers also treated visitors to an interesting carcass feed for their pride of five lionesses which was great to see. All together £4,37.99 was raised on the day which was a great amount and testament to the dedication of everyone involved. This brings their total donations towards our conservation projects to nearly £8,000 since 2018!
And finally rounding off the School Holidays we were invited to the Back To School Fundraiser at All Things Wild on Friday 11th September. This is their annual charity fundraiser with money raised being split between the SLCF, Wild Camels Protection Foundation and Save The Wild Chinchillas. All together the evening raised £2,232.50 which meant £744.17 was sent to us. This is the second time that they have supported us. It was a pleasure for trustee James to be invited to the evening and to meet Elijah, their conservation and education officer who has been our main contact there as well as a great opportunity to talk to the team there. Elijah also showed us their display boma in their goat walkthrough area and the accompanying signs detailing the work of our Better Bomas Project. Congratulations also to Elijah on their launch of their brand new six year conservation strategy. All in all, a great effort from a small wildlife park and we are delighted that they are continuing our support for us!
All in all this has been an incredibly successful summer fundraising season with us receiving donations directly from our zoo supporters and from fundraising events totalling over £3,700!! This has meant that we have been able to commit to our original fundraising target and we have sent a donation of £1,500 to sponsor the refurbishment of a GPS collar through KopeLion and we are currently working through other plans for the remaining funds so watch this space! We would like to add another thank you to all of our zoo partners for assisting us in these events and joining us in our mission, we are incredibly grateful.
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