NEW Pitch Story!!

For my story idea, I was first inspired by our class 7 lecture, called ‘creativity’. One of the ways to come up with an idea was to just go to Google and type in ‘find something for me to read’. Instead, I clicked on Google’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button at the bottom of the browser, and it takes you to a random page. The one that was randomly picked for me was “I’m feeling generous”. Then many, I mean MANY, charities popped up, ranging from helping Breonna’s Taylor’s case to helping African children in need. This then gave me the idea to look at local charities, and there’s a huge, very important one in my hometown. When everything in the world seemed like it was going crazy, most people tuned in on Netflix to watch a captivating docuseries called Tiger King. The series took the world by storm, and everyone talked about it on social media. However, once the series ended and people found out one of the main people of the docuseries was arrested, they wondered what happened to all the tigers. In my hometown of Keenesburg, Colorado, there’s a sanctuary called the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary. They are a nonprofit organization that takes in large cats and other large animals such as bears, camels, wolves, and lions. The docuseries was intriguing and made people more interested in zoos or sanctuaries that rehomed large wild cats from abusive zoos to random people’s backyards. After the docuseries, many people made the discovery that many of the tigers from Tiger King’s Joe Exotic’s farm made there way out to Keenesburg, Colorado, to start and live a better life. These animals are from around the world who were either kept as pets in family households or backyards or in other facilities that did not keep their needs and of course some of the tigers that were in Joe Exotic’s zoo. My story will go into depth about how the Netflix series has affected the organization. With everything going on in the world, did they gain more popularity? Because they are nonprofit, did they have a jump in donations? Also, with the pandemic, did they have many visitors or did that number go down as well? I may also go into depth about the tigers from the series and how they are today. I plan on visiting the sanctuary, since its basically in my backyard, and asking the staff members these questions. If possible, I’ll take a tour and see the true Joe Exotic tigers and learn more about each one and snap a few photos of the facility and try to conduct interviews with different volunteers. I plan on sharing the story to Facebook, mainly because of the people in my home town can read it and because the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary page has over 750,000 likes on their page, so hopefully it can gain some traction. I also plan on doing a little bit of background research, such as when and how the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary came to be and different ways people can help donate. I also know many celebrities help endorse the sanctuary, so that may help some of my readers to see how important this place is.

After pitching this idea to the class, I got tons of positive feedback. Many of my classmates have been to The Wildlife Animal Sanctuary themselves and knew exactly what I was talking about. Of course, many other people had also binge-watched the popular docuseries and had already felt a connection towards my story. I hope that when they read my blog, they are inspired to also visit the sanctuary and tell their friends about it, helping out the nonprofit organization. Another student asked if the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary advertises that they reduced the Tiger King tigers, and I plan on answering that question for them. I look forward to continuing this story for the course and reading others’ reactions to it!