Interview: Amanda Tapping

You have started a charity, also called Sanctuary, what

made you want to launch this?

It just seemed that at this time in the “current economic

crisis” that a lot of the smaller charities were suffering and

being obliterated. So Sanctuary for Kids was started with

the idea that we would support small grass-root charities

with very small operating costs and very little support. Our

mandate is to help charities in crisis around the world and

eventfully we’ll push the mandate more towards education

but right not it’s just about providing these children with

safety. We’ve found two organisations specifically this

year. One is the Nepal Orphan’s home which helps young

girls; gets them off the street, gives them an education

and help them become happy and productive members

of their society, and it’s just providing them with safety and

meals.

The other organisation is a local one in Vancouver which

helps homeless teens with children. So it’s helping get t

hem off the street, into homes so that they can become

good parents with safety for their children and it’s been

hugely successful so far. We also are donating money to

Haitian relief through Save the Children Canada which is an organisation which has been in Haiti for over thirty years so it knows exactly what’s needed and where it’s needed because they’ve worked so closely with the Haitian people. So it’s a series of small fundraisers, we’re utilising this incredible fan base, Sci-Fi fans are unlike any other in the world, they’re so generous and so supportive and so connected to each other and so we’re offering experiences like set tours of Sanctuary or come and have lunch or name a character or have a walk-on role on the show, things like that, that the fans love and we love doing and we’re raising great money.

What could people reading this do to help out?

They can check us out on our website, its www.SanctuaryForKids.org and there are a lot of different initiatives that we’re doing, there’s a lot of fans that are doing their own fundraising which is really cool. We’re also setting up a database on my own website where all our charities can talk to each other, maybe share resources and ideas. So there’s a lot of ways the fans can get involved beyond just simple donating, a lot of it is getting the word out.