Second Hand Clothing Sale!
Protecting Our Ocean Planet One Dress at a Time 
It was a beautiful sunny day at Bali Crystal Divers for the big second hand clothing sale fund raiser for Project Aware. The first task was to create a spider web of display line around the Santai Restaurant to hang the clothing from. We had hundreds of items of clothing, shoes and jewelry donated by Crystal’s amazing family, friends and staff. There was something for everyone! From baby clothes to leather skirts and a pair of blue shoes (maybe not from Elvis, but close!!).
We even had some tasty home-baked goods donated for sale at the fund raiser. Not only did we have great donors, we had fabulous buyers! We had buyers waiting patiently under warm sunny skies for the opening time to make the first dash for bargains. We held all buyers to the same start time so that all had a fair chance at all the bargains. Thanks to all who participated, over 11 million rupia was raised for Project Aware. It was an impressive accomplishment given that prices started at only 1,000 rupia. It was also an opportunity to spread the word about practicing re-use, recycle and re-purpose rather than just throwing things away. Bali is working hard to change this throw-away approach to life and Crystal Divers are doing their best to change attitudes one dive and diver at a time. Nothing went to waste! All the items not sold were donated to another charity organization to support the animals needing help and rescue around Bali. This was a win and good time for everyone involved!!
Read more at Project Aware http://www.projectaware.org/update/bali-crystal-divers-protecting-our-ocean-planet-one-dress-time
Crystal Diver’s Shout Out For Sharks
A desire to protect sharks and have fun led the Crystal Divers team to organize a massive month of fundraising for the Big Shark Shout Out.
Holly and Crystal Divers launched their Big Shark Shout Out month with a huge barbecue and shark themed drinks night. The shark shots proved very popular and 76 people enjoyed the amazing barbecue, with even more for drinks!
A try dive day in Crystal Divers pool with Poseidon’s new rebreathers raised more money and our yoga teacher Pinglan is very generously donating all of April’s class fees to the cause.
“Our sincere thanks go to Bali Crystal Divers. The Foundation relies on champions like Holly to go above and beyond and raise much needed funds for our ocean. Holding fundraising events is a great way to get your dive community together for a good cause,” said Joanna McNamara, Coordinator Project AWARE Foundation.
The Big Shark Shout Out is a shark month of action aimed at protecting sharks from overexploitation – overfishing, finning and bycatch.
This Earth Day and throughout April, Project AWARE and divers worldwide call on local communities to rally support for the protection of the world’s most vulnerable shark species by signing and organizing petition signatures to protect heavily traded species.
Well done Crystal Divers. Over 1000 signatures for the shark petition and over $1,200 raised so far to protect sharks. Keep up the fantastic work.
Crystal Divers Shout For Sharks!!
Shark Conservation
Crystal Divers had a massive push to support Project Aware in Shark Conservation petition; in total we collected over 1000 signatures! An enormous thankyou to all of our staff, interns, divemaster trainees and IDC candidates for making a huge effort to help Project Aware to protect our Sharks, but our efforts do not end there! Please follow the link to www.projectaware.org to see how you can help to have more Shark species protected, or come and join us at Crystal and sign our petition!
Junior Coral Reef Conservation!
As far as the environment is concerned, it is never to early to start! And on this note I was lucky enough to be invited to Sanur Independent School to conduct Project Aware’s Coral Reef Conservation along with 3 of Crystal Divers Internship students Vintty, Nico and Imam.
We had a great afternoon taking over Science class with the grade 4 pupils talking about Reef formation, the various organisms that call the Reef ’home’ as well as the threats that Coral Reefs around the world face and what steps we can take to protect it!
As all of the kids have grown in Bali they have all had the opportunity to snorkel our local reefs and I was amazed by their enthusiasm and passion for protecting the underwater world; in fact I think that we had the longest Science lesson ever fielding questions from very interested students!
Now we are all looking forward to next term when we will be helping grade 4 to organise a beach clean up for the whole school; updates to come on the next blog. . .
Special thanks to Bayu Vangsgaard for helping me to organise this event!
