Origins of IN-spire
After embarking on a transformative 6 month solo travel journey through Asia in 2016, where she dedicated her time to volunteering at various community projects, Franci underwent a career change from retail management to yoga and meditation facilitator. Inspired by her experiences abroad, she returned with the intention to "gently shake the world" through the practice of yoga, meditation, breathwork, sound healing, retreats, and charitable giving events to ethical causes, culminating in the creation of Happy Hearts Yoga Project.
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IN-spire represents the evolution from the quest for happiness to realizing that embracing challenges can lead to more fulfillment and contentment. We still believe in the importance of journeying INward in order to ripple out into the world more aligned to our true values, and we now also wish to emphasize the importance of the IN-spired mindset that harnesses the breath, mindfulness, and purpose to live more fully.
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See below for our foundational charitable giving work!
Soi Dog
Goal $500 - raised & donated
This would fund their undercover team for one month in North East Thailand that is closing down dog meat butchers, wholesalers, and intercepting smuggled dogs.
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They have been able to successfully control the overpopulation problem of stray dogs in Phuket by sterilizing more than 80% of the dog population there and also made it the first rabies free area in Thailand. The dog meat trade became illegal in Thailand because of them and they helped make it illegal to eat dog meat in 2014. That being said, it is still not illegal to eat dog meat in neighboring countries and because of this they still work undercover trying to expose dog meat butchers near the North East area of Thailand.
Working closely with the government they are able to create stricter consequences for animal abuse and also ensure there is follow through with sentencing. About 400 dogs live in the sanctuary at a time, but they also have very impressive adoption rates, last year adopting out 500 dogs.
Peepal Farm
Goal $700 - raised & donated
This would sterilize around 9 cows which includes the transportation and surgery.
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Peepal Farm is a very small organization that is trying to reduce cow abandonment in India. Generally when cow's milk run out, most owned cows have to be beaten out of where they have resided their entire lives and forced onto the streets where they generally eat through trash piles and consume lots of plastic and/or get hit by cars. To resolve this issue and make cows more desirable even after milk runs out, they have begun to manufacture products out of their manure. They have started to make incense and the pots that plants go in when they are sold.
In order to get buy in for their project, they have begun to host local girls from the village they are in and teach them how to use google with the belief that knowledge will help them rise above. They have also been hosting the children in their community at their farm so that they can see all of their animals on the farm and how they get treated as well as speak to they're volunteers that they host mostly through workaway.info. Volunteers are mostly there to help with their farm and tending to their almost fully permaculture garden or walking their several rescued dogs.
Permakultur Kalimantan
Goal $700 - raised & donated
To purchase Portuguese distilling equipment to make hydrosols and essencier to extract the oils from their permaculture farm.
"We want to begin a small scale soap and coconut oil pilot project so that we can sustainably fund our organization's work (as you know teaching sustainable agriculture, livelihoods, conservation, etc) as well as down the track give locals (especially women) work opportunities through the creation of a new eco sustainable enterprise. The raw materials are all here: coconuts, various fragrant plants, herbs, sodium hydroxide can be sourced from ash. Also there is no homemade eco friendly soap being made here (you can get them in bali, but not here). Its the distilling equipment that wasn't available here.
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The aim is that a proportion of sales not only helps Permakultur Kalimantan Foundation, it can also create employment and also beyond that we might be able to create a community cooperative model where other women like her can learn how to make the soap and produce soap to our standard and then we can sell it, create income for others." Frederika Louise Paembonan
Elephant Nature Park
Goal $1000 - raise & donated
For flea and tick medicine
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The Elephant Nature Park Dog Sanctuary is in a tropical climate zone where ticks thrive. If volunteers have the stress of removing ticks from dogs taken off of their plate, this will allow for more time volunteers will have to socialize dogs. The volunteers can also take them on longer walks so that when visitors come to potentially adopt, the dogs are better behaved because they are tired from their walks. In preventing tick diseases and blood loss due to tick infestations, it allows veterinarians to continue to focus on bigger health issues from sanctuary dogs as well as the time to perform more sterilizations which is necessary in reducing the overpopulation problem.
The Dog Sanctuary began as a result of the 2011 floods in Bangkok. Originally starting with 155 of the 2000 rescued dogs, Elephant Nature Park now houses 400 plus dogs. They have a small animal clinic on site and have volunteer vets that stay one month at a time as well.
Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary
Goal $1,500 - raised & donated!
Need - Purchase more land. "The constant threat of deforestation to the property abutting BLES is our new reality. Only 15% of Thailand remains forestland and we are desperate to realize our dream of a release project by expanding our acreage.
In as much as we have been able to provide safety as well as physical and mental rehabilitation for our elephants, our intention is their eventual transition to independent living. It has always been our conviction that our elephants be returned to as natural a habitat as possible and live out their lives with dignity. By securing an area that is absent from human-inflicted danger, BLES elephants will learn to live as elephants are meant to — in a self-reliant herd.
Wild elephant populations in Thailand have all but disappeared while the domesticated elephant population continues to increase. Forced breeding to satisfy the demands of elephant-back tourism has become a new industry.