2.6 million meters cleared & counting!
APOPO’s Mine Action team in Mozambique has ensured the safe return of over 2.6 million square meters of land to date. With the ongoing clearance and release of safe land, a sense of freedom is given back to communities affected by the landmine problem. Families can live on their land again and farm without fear of injury; children can walk safely to school; and community development through agricultural or infrastructure projects is made possible.
This year, our Mine Action team has already cleared 530,160 square meters of land in the Gaza Province, unearthing 554 landmines, 208 unexploded ordnances and 1,852 small arms and ammunitions in the process. These items have now been destroyed, so no further harm can be caused to innocent civilians living or passing through the mine-affected areas. Find out more about APOPO’s humanitarian demining efforts: check out the Mine Action page of our website.
A new addition to our Mine Action team
Tesfazghi Tewelde (or Tess, for short) recently landed in Mozambique to take up the role of Program Manager for our Mine Action Program. "I'm very impressed by the extraordinary work APOPO has achieved so far, and the commitment of APOPO in expanding its capacity and productivity to help Mozambique become mine free by 2014," Tess said upon arrival.
The new manager was warmly welcomed at a team-building barbecue, where he emphasized the importance of fostering a healthy team spirit. “Bringing staff together is very important in mine action…due to the size of the operation, and all the different people living and working in one place.”
Before joining APOPO, Tess worked for the operations section of the Geneva International Center of Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), and contributed his technical field experience to the land release methodology. Tess brings to our team 11 years of experience in Mine Action operations in Africa, in both humanitarian and commercial sectors. Welcome to the team, Tess!
Making the move: Mozambique to Thailand
Andrew Sully, our previous Mozambique Program Manager, made the move to Thailand last month to lead the APOPO-PRO Mine Action team in our survey project along the Thai-Cambodia border. Reflecting on the move, Andrew said: “I was sad to leave Mozambique and the people I had known and worked with for three years. So much excellent work and growth had happened during that time, and there still remains so much to do.” What made the move easier was knowing that the program would be in excellent hands with Tess.
Compared with Mozambique, Thailand is a real change for Andrew. While being more advanced in areas such as infrastructure and technology, Thailand’s mine action effort is only just beginning. “Many years with very limited funding have meant that they have been trying to do it on their own, and the result is the very traditional approach,” he said. “This approach needs to be replaced with the Land Release methodology, and this is what APOPO brings with its Mine Action Program.”
This new approach to Thailand’s landmine problem could drastically shorten the lifespan of the remaining minefields and increase the number of cleared mines. It also opens an avenue to encourage more funds, both internal and external, to be spent on solving the landmine problem in Thailand. “It’s an exciting project, as it can make a real difference to Mine Action in Thailand, as well as strongly influence the neighbouring countries,” Andrew said.
The APOPO-PRO team is already making great progress in Trat province, having found more than 140 anti-personnel mines (as well as one anti-tank mine, and 168 explosive remnants of war) during the first seven weeks of non-technical and technical survey. To learn more about APOPO's Mine Action efforts in Thailand, click here.
HeroRATs steal the show at Nane Nane
Each year, all of Tanzania comes together for a week of festivities in honor of “Nane Nane,” a vibrant celebration of agriculture held in the cities of Morogoro and Dodoma. The revelry concludes annually on the eighth day of the eighth month (the name “Nane Nane” itself means “Eight Eight” in Swahili), when farmers, businesses, NGOs, and the general public flock to the local fairgrounds.
APOPO and the HeroRATs joined in the fun as part of the display put together by our partner institution, Sokoine University of Agriculture. Throughout the course of the week, trainers Haruni and John demonstrated the amazing capabilities of our detection rats to intrigued and astonished crowds. Lucky visitors to APOPO’s display were able to witness a mock training session, with one of our rats showing off her detection expertise as she walked along, sniffing out (and digging up) tea eggs filled with TNT.
With hundreds of spectators stopping by to check out our work for themselves, the HeroRATs certainly enjoyed their time in the spotlight and can’t wait for next year’s Nane Nane fair!
Selemani & Abdullah: Looking back
HeroRAT trainers Selemani and Abdullah have each been working with APOPO for nearly nine years, and have helped us expand while remaining committed to APOPO’s mission. They also share the distinction of being the first Tanzanian trainers to enter the real minefields in Mozambique with their HeroRATs!
When they took on the role of humanitarian deminers in 2003, they were conscious of how important it was, and came to Mozambique feeling both confident and anxious. Selemani remembers, “It was like a dream come true. It was an historic event, because we were the first Tanzanians to enter the real minefields in Mozambique!” Abdullah adds, “I was happy, but it was my first time out of my country, so I was also afraid. There was pressure to show the rats to the world, but because we received training and followed procedures, we became comfortable.”
Along with learning a new language and being far from friends and family, the pair also faced the challenge of preparing themselves to finally enter the real minefields with the HeroRATs – a tough task even after years of training. “When we arrived, we attended a course in mine detection principles and techniques,” Selemani says. “We were shown how mines killed people – we even saw skeletons in the minefields, and old bones with military clothing. It made us afraid, but it didn’t stop us.”
Their determination paid off: on the very first day, the team of trainers and HeroRATs found 10 landmines!
Almost eight years on, Selemani and Abdullah have grown with APOPO and watched the organization grow – and have a few words of advice for HeroRAT trainers who might want to follow in their (careful) footsteps to the minefields in Mozambique. “Our work needs concentration. It needs focus,” says Abdullah. “We need to be cooperative with each other and help each other, because at APOPO, we are all like family.”
Subiaco Rotaract Club goes wild for HeroRATs
On the evening of August 12, more than 200 revelers joined the Rotaract Club of Subiaco in Western Australia for a fantastically fierce fundraiser in honor of – you guessed it – the HeroRATs! As Rotaract is a Rotary-sponsored organization designed for service-oriented young men and women, club members in Subiaco decided to put their principles into action by throwing a great party for a great cause.
The night’s theme of “Urban Jungle” was made complete by a strictly wild dress code and six live performances, including a fire performance troupe, African dancers and drummers, and Brazilian samba dancers. Among the creatively decked-out attendees were safari-goers mingling with animals from the African savanna, adventurers, warriors, and even a giant banana treat (the perfect costume for our HeroRATs)!
In between the performances, club Community Services Director Choy Lin Lee took to the stage to present a slideshow describing the work of APOPO. The untamed enthusiasm of the club and their guests certainly paid off: in total, the Urban Jungle fundraiser raised more than $4,200 for the HeroRATs.
APOPO would like to thank the Rotaract Club of Subiaco for their amazing efforts on our behalf! Be sure to check out the club’s blog post about the fundraiser and spectacular photos by photographer Emiko Watanabe, and read why they chose to support the HeroRATs.
Have you been inspired with a creative initiative of your own? Check out our website for ways to get involved or contact us to share your fundraising ideas.
Every voice counts for GlobalGiving
Our friends at GlobalGiving are working on an exciting new initiative here in East Africa, known as the Storytelling Project: an experiment in collecting community knowledge on a massive scale, and feeding it back to audiences that can use it. Over 20,000 stories have already been collected from 6,000+ community members by asking this simple question: "Tell us about a time when a person or an organization tried to change something in your community."
The project will soon make its way to Tanzania, and we’re looking forward to hearing stories from our local community about the challenges and the changemakers – and using these insights to create better links between the two. Find out more about the GlobalGiving Storytelling Project here.
Join our online community!
Can’t get enough of the HeroRATs through our website or newsletter? Want to learn more about our rats and the global challenges they’re helping to solve? Join our online community of fans, friends and supporters! By following our rat-tweets on Twitter, and “Liking” our hero fan page on Facebook, you’ll be able to easily see (and share!) all of the latest updates, news, pictures, and videos of APOPO and the HeroRATs. Whether you’re familiar with the humanitarian work we do, or just stopping by for a look at our brave heroes, we’d love to have you join the conversation. Be sure to invite your friends, too!
Until next month, we send our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support of our heroes!
Warm regards,
The HeroRAT Team
At the end of another month, we are pleased to report that our Mozambique Mine Action team has now cleared more than 423,106 square meters of land this year! These latest clearance figures bring us to a grand total of 2.5 million square meters of suspected minefields, cleared and returned the local population in Mozambique.
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Give a rat. Help save lives.
Looking for a unique gift for your dad this Father’s Day? Support our HeroRAT project on GlobalGiving, or give a rat and help save lives!
Make your contribution in honor of your father, and watch as his face lights up when he realizes that together, you've helped provide banana treats for one of our life-saving, bomb-sniffing heroes in Mozambique, or tuberculosis screening for villagers in Tanzania.
Alternatively, you can surprise your father and Adopt-a-Rat as a gift for him. Not only will he receive an adoption certificate and updates on the life-saving work of his expertly trained rat, but he will also have the satisfaction of knowing he raised his child to care about the well-being of those around the world.
Through your support, our HeroRATs will be able to continue saving people from becoming landmine victims and reducing the spread of tuberculosis. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
For more reasons on why to give a rat, take a look at the Support HeroRATs section of our website or read Nick Kristof’s Father’s Day article from last year in the New York Times, "Dad will really like this".
Make a donation in your Dad's honor to the HeroRAT project on GlobalGiving or click here to give a HeroRAT adoption today!
20 new HeroRATs embark on their first mine-sniffing mission
On May 18th we said farewell to 20 new graduates of our HeroRAT landmine detection training program, who embarked on their first life-saving mission in the Gaza Province of Mozambique. There was a flurry of activity at APOPO’s headquarters in Tanzania on the morning of departure: making transport arrangements, providing in-flight entertainment (peanuts in a small container, just waiting to drop down!) and settling the rats into their first-class transport cages.
Before they left us, our future heroes feasted on tomato, apples, peanuts and small fish, along with plenty of water. We then proudly waved them off on the first leg (or paw) of their journey to Dar es Salaam to meet the connecting flight to Maputo, Mozambique. The rats were accompanied by some of their human colleagues, to make sure they arrived at the airport in peak condition and ready for their new adventure: saving lives! We wish the new graduates well in their work in the real minefields, and trust our Mozambique Mine Action team will take good care of them as they settle into their new homes.
UK reception for ASHOKA Fellow Bart Weetjens
ASHOKA UK hosted a reception in London for our founder and ASHOKA Fellow, Bart Weetjens, on May 11th. Although none of our four-legged heroes could be present for the event (they were busy saving lives), Bart represented them well, sharing his experiences with an intimate audience of dedicated HeroRAT supporters and members of ASHOKA’s network.
Dr Sima Barmania was among those who attended the reception, and followed up with a blog post, ‘HeroRATs – No Ordinary Rat’, on The Independent's website. She wrote: “Quite sheepishly, I admit that until recently the triumph of the HeroRAT had managed to escape my attention. I suspect my lack of knowledge of these furry labourers was partly due to my self-confessed rat prejudice.”
It’s a common perception, held by many who stumble across APOPO’s work for the first time, before they learn the facts behind the fiction (and discover that our rats are in fact lovely and sociable creatures!) Bart’s talk aimed to challenge these preconceptions about rats, inviting the audience to look beyond the surface to the social problems that exist which his “heroes” are helping to solve.
And as Dr Sima Barmania’s blog post concludes, it appears at least some perceptions were changed: “Given the affection Bart has for his workers, it is hard to not find the HeroRAT endearing; admittedly, it may be a while before I can have a face to face interaction with a rodent but perhaps I could be convinced to adopt a HeroRAT.”
The APOPO team wishes to thank Jenny Prosser and the team at ASHOKA UK for organizing the night, which was a fantastic opportunity for people to hear first-hand the story of how our HeroRATs came into being.
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Get your Dad's Day gift this GG Bonus Day – June 15, 2011
Get your Father's Day shopping done early and help APOPO and our HeroRATs! Make your donation in your dad's honor on June 15th and your online donations to the HeroRAT project will be matched by GlobalGiving at 30%. That’s more bananas for your buck!
In the words of Nicholas D. Kristof in his Father's Day article last year "Dad will really like this", in the New York Times, "What man wouldn’t pass up a necktie for the chance to be associated with an educated, supermacho giant rat?"
These extra funds mean...
Once the $75,000 that GlobalGiving has set aside for this event has run out, GlobalGiving will also give a $1,000 bonus to the project that receives the most donations and another $1,000 bonus will go to the project that receives donations from the most individual donors.
So make your contribution count even more on Wednesday, June 15th, and donate at: www.globalgiving.org/projects/herorats/.
Thank you very much for your support! We truly value your friendship.
Warm regards,
The HeroRAT team
herorats@apopo.org
www.apopo.org
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