This year I will be celebrating 12 years working with my colleagues at Born Free. I once read a quote: “If you find a job you love, you will never work again.” Whilst I do agree – I am so lucky to work with the Born Free team and be part of their amazing achievements – the work is tough and relentless, but it is the right thing to do on behalf of all our amazing supporters for the animals.

Joanne Bartholomew

This year has been named Born Free’s Year of the Lion. The head of our pride is of course Virginia McKenna and together we mark what would have been the 100th birthday of our late co-founder, Virginia’s beloved husband Bill Travers. Together you can help us achieve so much and we hope there is something you can get involved with this year with us.

In January we launched our Born Free Forever exhibition at its first venue in London. We hope everyone will get to see our pride of 25 life-sized bronze lion sculptures as the they tour the country.  It really is a safari for survival as back in the 1960s, when the film Born Free was made, an estimated 200,000 lions were recorded in the wild but today as few as 20,000 remain. How can we not fight for them to ensure their future?

Every lion in the exhibition has their own tale to tell, and everyone who visits will play a vital role by sharing their individual stories, raising awareness, and encouraging family and friends to donate to help us protect lions, resolve conflict with communities living alongside them, and stop the horrors of trophy hunting. I believe together is stronger and we can do this!  So please visit and share with us your photos, donate if you can but mostly enjoy seeing them – just like Born Free supporter Sheena Wilson did, when she visited the exhibition in Newcastle! See below for her write-up and photo with King’s sculpture.