The Dr Rimington’s Award recognises highly meritorious contributions in the conservation of wild tigers and encourages continued interest among future generations. We have two winners and runners-ups for the children’s category from a junior and senior level for year 2019! Congratulations!
 

1. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT!

Katya Cherepanova is a first-grade student from Russia. She watched the Discovery documentary, Tigerland, with her mother and realised not many people are aware of issues surrounding the Amur tigers.

She gave her class a presentation on her science project about these tigers and turned out to be quite a natural-born public speaker! Katya hand-drawn each slides using her colour pencils to tell a compelling story of what is happening to them in the wild.  

2. THEY THINK CREATIVELY – AND BIG!

“I really want to save the tigers, but I am still small. I only have good grades,” she explained. But Katya did not let her age stopped her from doing something. She created a short quiz on wild tigers and encouraged her schoolmates to participate. The 8-year-old hopes a responsible company would turn the number of perfect scores on her quiz into donations for WWF’s work in tiger conservation!

3. THEY’RE ARE WILLING TO GIVE THEIR HOURS FOR OTHERS

Nine-years-old Ronan Murphy from Australia agrees to cook dinner for his whole family once a week to earn enough for the “tiger adoption” program run by his local WWF office. He sent this sum of money together with a self-made card with a bold question, “What do you think is the biggest tiger? I know, do you?”

4. THEY HONE THEIR SKILLS

Lian Kandelaar is a 14-year old from the Netherlands with a passion for writing and kept a personal blog. She decided to put the talent she has grown in storytelling to good use and wrote three books on wildlife in support of WWF’s youth campaigns. Her latest one is about tigers called “Bender”, centering on the life of a Sumatran tiger cub. 

All three books were published in her home country with about 1500 copies sold in book stores. 200 of them are in public libraries to make sure other children can borrow and read about tigers. Lian generously donated the proceeds she received from selling these books to keep tiger conservation work in Sumatra going. 

5. THEY ARE WILLING TO COLLABORATE WITH OTHERS

Lian’s book was translated in Bahasa Indonesia and used an education material for schools in the rural villages by the local WWF office. About 200 copies of these were printed. During a summer break, she visited Sumatra for three weeks, including a trip to one of the schools with a local guide, Gia, to talk about her book with the children.

AND REMAIN CURIOUS, ALWAYS!

Twelve-year-old Rabi Adhikari from Nepal is passionate about the environment. As the vice-chairperson of the eco-club in his school, he set a good example by participating in various conservation-related activities, from art competitions, the annual Wild Wisdom Quiz Competition, awareness campaigns – and even a conservation rally!

These children are an inspiration to us all. Add your voice for the planet to get world leaders to take action for our planet too!

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This article is written by Ashleigh Wang, Communications Officer, for WWF’s Tigers Alive Initiative