If anyone on here follows me on twitter, you’ll know that I adopted a snow leopard a few days ago. The adoption pack arrived today so I wanted to go over all the stuff that was in it and what the money goes towards so hopefully it will be useful in case anyone wonders what you actually get out of it and what your £3 (or you can offer more) a month does.

It came in just a plain brown box and was quite small. I’d glad because it shows that they really are trying everything to not waste resources. Too often do I order things which come in massive boxes for something so small. (My post on my Hello Drama necklace demonstrates this perfectly. It’s box was unneeded really – it could have easily came in an envelope with bubble wrap. It had that foamy stuff for protection but it had fallen down to the bottom anyway in transit so it can’t have made much different really.)

Included in the package is the snow leopard cuddly toy as promised. The tag has a nice picture of one and says “endangered species” on the front and has a couple of facts about snow leopards inside. Its something small but it really looks like every effort has been made and I’m sure its made to a high standard.

There was also a letter basically thanking us for adopting and some information on the payment methods and such.

Then there’s the actual adoption pack. It includes an adoption certificate but they also emailed a pdf one which is useful if you’re sharing it as we are so everyone can have one.

There’s a booklet on what the WWF do in all of the areas they work in including information on forests, climate change and carbon footprint. There’s a lot of info on how they’ve helped over the years which is really nice.

There‘s also a leaflet with information on snow leopards themselves which is really interesting.

And last but not least, there’s a page of stickers and a few bookmarks which are really nice as well. It’s really good because its something my little sister would be more interested in rather than reading about what the WWF have done as I can’t imagine her being too interested in that.

That’s about it really. They’ll send out more updates throughout the year (I think you get 3 updates a year so we’ll see what those are like). It’s just really nice to know that I’m helping something whenever I don’t feel so active. I’m so busy at the minute that I can’t be physically helping much anyway.

The only other thing I would say is that you don’t adopt a specific animal which a lot of people seem to think. Your money goes towards specific programmes which they implement to make sure that they can get enough food and can breed and are generally not being put in any danger by people ruining their habitats and so on as they are an endangered species. The money is really worth it though and I would strongly advise it if you’re thinking about adopting an animal. Even if you don’t want a long-term committment, you could still donate.

Something else that made me want to adopt (aside from my mother suggesting it) is that my boyfriend went to a Party Conference last saturday and he brought me some leaflets about WWF from there. I had no idea they did anything in Northern Ireland! This actually makes me see them in a much better light! Usually it seems that no one does anything here. For the most part it seems like there are some places to adopt dogs/cats and that’s about it. I’ve had trouble finding people to do animal welfare/rights related events with so I’m surprised really especially because I had never heard of it before.

Their main priorities in Northern Ireland are

• Safeguarding our rivers and lakes
• Safeguarding our marine environment
• Climate Change
• Sustainability

so it’s not really animal oriented but they’re definitely looking at things that need to be changed and I’m really pleased they are!

So yes, all in all this was a good investment and its made me see Northern Ireland in a whole different light as I know the kind of things I’m interested in are actually happening here. This is really useful to me, especially now because at the minute I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make it into uni in September. My grades simply aren’t good enough no matter how hard I try so hopefully I can find something. It’s also made me think about joining the Green Party but I’ll be waiting until after exams to fully look into that.