Cartoon elephant


When was the last time you saw an elephant? Was it at the zoo? Or on TV? Where I live I see elephants everyday, in fact seven of them live here with me. Welcome to the Millennium Elephant Foundation ( MEF for short) MEF is a charity that helps to look after elephants in Sri Lanka, especially elephants who are old or sick.



Elephants are every important in Sri Lanka, they are not only in the zoo here, if a person is very lucky they can own an elephant in Sri Lanka. It is considered good luck to touch an elephant.

Elephants are important here for work and for religion. Each year the temples hold special parades where they dress the elephants in fancy robes and the elephants carry the 'relics'.

 Pherahera



Hindu God - Ganesh

The 'relics' are things that remind Sri Lankans about Lord Buddah and help them to remember their religon (allot of Sri Lankans are Buddhist but some are Muslim, Christian or Hindu) Elephants are important for the Hindu people as well as they remind them of one of the Hindu gods who has a head like an elephant. This Hindu god is called 'Ganesh'.


Even though people in Sri Lanka love elephants when they get old it is very hard to care for them properly. Because an elephant is so big they need lots and lots of medicine when they get sick, and often that costs lots and lost of money. Sometimes it is too hard or too expensive for an owner to care for their elephant so they bring the elephant here to MEF and we look after them.

Sick cartoon elephant

Because there are elephants living all over Sri Lanka and because elephants walk really slowly it is sometimes too hard for the elephants to come to us when they need treatment. The MEF has a special car called a Mobile Veterinary Unit that can take a vet to see any sick elephant in Sri Lanka.

MEF is working hard to look after the elephants in Sri Lanka but we need YOUR help! If you think that you would like to get together with your friends, family, school, guide or scout group to help the elephants please contact us! (email link here, required data, name age, country)

There are lots of different ways you could help, you can adopt an elephant either by yourself (Under 16 membership 7.60 pounds) or with a group of people ( friends family school etc) or you can come up with you own way to help. This could be convincing your school to hold a out of uniform day or by writing a letter to your local Newspaper.

We would love to hear your stories about elephants and why you think its important we should look after them, write us a story and email it to elefound@sltnet.lk and we will publish the best ones on our website