My Nonprofit Reviews

Discover a charity that will fascinate you, and warm your heart like no other: learn about APOPO. I did, and I tell everyone I know about it.
As a scientist, I am fascinated by the training and technology used, by how efficient and simple and portable the HeroRATs are. As a lover of great stories, I am astonished at the way the organization and its deployment of Pouched Rats, were designed and came to be. As an animal lover, I'm in rapture, because the HeroRATs are adorable! To see them learn and work so meticulously is wondrous, and to watch them fill their round cheeks with bananas or melon is a new high water mark for cuteness. To see the mothers and little ones in their small houses will fill your heart with warmth and love. These sweet, little whiskered faces will learn and practice, learn and practice, until their proficiency is flawless. And what they learn is not for a foolish or heartless purpose. It's to save the lives of animals and humans.
'But what happens to the poor rats?' I asked at first, dreading that they would be thought expendable. When I learned that the HeroRATs are handled gently, regularly evaluated by veterinarians, and choose for themselves when they will not go to work, that they are allowed to retire in good care—that the lives of these amazing creatures matter very much to APOPO, I knew I'd found a charity I can believe in.
So I adopted a HERORat, who was born in April. I named him Pax Vobiscum, which is Latin for 'Peace among you/Peace with you.' I hold everyone who works with the HeroRATs in high esteem. In fact, I marvel at them.
And I love the rats. When I lie in bed in my safe apartment, I think of the HeroRATs with a loving and thankful heart. Because of them, people in areas traumatized by war, terrified even to walk in open spaces for fear of explosives—have had the freedom to walk and raise crops in their own communities restored. By a creature many people disparage or fear. By HeroRATs.

Attached is an image I created for Twitter on US Independence Day, a day on which many Americans sing the national anthem. A line describes bombs bursting in air during a war long ago. The truth is that many explosives don't activate completely, ordinance gets dropped and land mines are intentional. I wanted to bring people's attention to this, on what is usually a happy, free holiday in America, because I was thinking about the HeroRATs far away. Yes, they matter that much to me. I find myself thinking about them often.
Learn more about APOPO. See what great good the HeroRATs do. You'll never think badly of rats again. And you might find you agree that using 1kg rats to systematically locate explosives by scent is perhaps the greatest humanitarian-scientific idea of the century.