The Big Give1And not, as I almost titled it, the Big Gove (ugh!) is a charity that helps other charities to find sponsors who double their income from public donations. December 3rd kicks off the Big Give Christmas Challenge — if you have some spare change, I’d recommend the Orangutan Foundation.
It’s a sad truth that fundraising takes up about half of most charities’ income and resources. Anything they can do to make fundraising easier means that more money goes to the causes they support.
Every day this week, I’ll link up to a charity that means something to me. If it’s not your kind of thing, you can find hundreds of other groups in the Big Give Christmas Challenge.
The Orangutan Foundation
I would never have written Blood River without the Orangutan Foundation, a charity that protects rainforests in Borneo. In 2017, I was fortunate to join a summer project at one of their camps in Kalimantan, where I came face-to-face — literally — with wild orangutans.
Orangutans are remarkable creatures, but their homes are being eroded by industry and expanding settlements. The corrupt Indonesian government treats wildlife as an inconvenience and often makes grand statements that are undermined by its policies. Many politicians are hand in glove with the palm oil, logging and mining industries that encourage deforestation to expand.
The Orangutan Foundation buys land to create its own reservations for orangutans, staffed with dedicated wardens and researchers. They work with local communities including the indigenous Dayak people, who have also suffered discrimination from the central government in Java. Education and outreach are essential to dispel the myth that the rainforest is a vast and everlasting pot of gold, but a fragile and dwindling luxury.
As with many great ape conservation groups, the Orangutan Foundation also rescues and rehabilitates orphaned orangutans. Baby orangutans are frequently found as pets, having lost their mothers to hunting, deforestation or simply being taken for the illegal pet trade.
Usually malnourished and sick, they are cared for and taught the forest skills they would have learned in the wild. As they grow up, the orangutans are soft-released into semi-independent communities in the reserves. Many of them will eventually return to the wild and raise their own offspring.
The Orangutan Foundation is a remarkable success story, but it needs your help.