You don’t need to spend months organizing a lavish ball or a big golf tournament to raise funds for your favourite cause. Last week All About Scuba, Victoria, Australia held their Annual Awards Night and raised a fantastic $1,000 in the space of a few hours.
How did they do it?   You guessed it, a raffle!

Last April, a group of divers from Nottingham Trent University teamed up with a local dive centre and NGO in Blue Bay Mauritius to organize a series of Dive Against Debris events and reef surveys.
The diving team led by Dr Nicholas Ray (Senior Lecturer in Environmental Ecology and PADI MSDT), with the help of Coral Diving Centre staff, surveyed the lagoon and outer reef surrounding the south east corner of Mauritius.

Indonesia's newest jail helped raise over $10,000 this World Ocean Day.  In a bid to bail our ocean out of trouble two Bali dive centers got super creative. They built a bamboo jail to raise much needed funds for our ocean. 
Bali Crystal Divers, Blue Season Bali and friends joined forces for the most unconventional, highly inventive fundraiser on record. 

To celebrate World Oceans Day: Youth the Next Wave for Change, we shine the light on Concordia International School, Shanghai.  In 2007 PADI Members Joel Klammer and Paul Adams made a big commitment to Racha Yai reef, Thailand.  Over the next five years their students witnessed firsthand coral bleaching; collected important data for conservation; discovered bananas and seawater never mix well and the joy of a 30 second shower!

Forget your fins and grab your runners!  Running season has kicked off around the world. And this year divers are setting personal challenges to raise funds for their favourite cause.    
The feel-good factor of finishing a run and raising funds for the ocean you love can’t be matched. If you’ve got a run planned this year why not fundraise too?
Whether you opt for a 5km fun run, a 10km event, a half marathon or jump straight into a full marathon there’s no doubt you’ll get an extra buzz if you run for a cause close to your heart.

Soon World Ocean Day June 8th will reach out to young people to inspire them to protect our ocean planet.  The theme for 2012 is Youth: the Next Wave for Change.
Project AWARE dive leaders are one step ahead.  This April saw Atlantis Dive Centre, Dubai inspire high school children to be the next wave for change. 
Atlantis Dive Centre’s Week Without Walls Program gave 40 youngsters the opportunity to learn to dive.

A desire to protect sharks and have fun led Holly Macleod to organize a massive month of fundraising for the Big Shark Shout Out.
Originally from England Holly now lives in Bali and works for Bali Crystal Divers as a PADI Course Director.  “I’m lucky enough to have enjoyed amazing diving and encounters with incredible marine life  and I’m passionately committed to making sure we protect our oceans for future generations to enjoy,” said Holly.  

 
More and more dive centres are signing up to be 100% AWARE! All these donations directly support ocean protection across the globe. A big thanks to everyone who has signed up already.

“Today we changed the mindset of 13 Divemasters and 4 Instructors and I know they will be AWARE for the rest of their lives,” said Jens Nielsen Ban’s PADI Staff instructor.  It was a memorable day for Jens and fellow instructor Simon from Ban's Diving Resort, Koh Tao, Thailand who taught their first AWARE Shark Conservation course.