December 2008 Newsletter

Contents

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Introduction

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HeroRATs Make Great Gifts for the Holidays

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APOPO Receives Prestigious Skoll Award

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Spotlight on Mozambique: Meet Francisco Tivane

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Meet Andrew Sully - New Program Manager for APOPO inMozambique

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Participation in Peace Day and Partnership with Roots & Shoots

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Support APOPO's Work

Introduction

In this issue of the APOPO newsletter, we have updates from all sides of theorganization. We are delighted to share that APOPO won the Skoll Foundation Award whose support will help us expand our capacity for growth in thecoming three years. The award is a great honor and a tribute to the work wehave done this far. We look forward to the growth of the coming years andthank you for all your support to get us to this point. In Mozambique, we haverecently been tasked with clearing the Gaza Province (1 of 8 Provinces inMozambique) in the next 6 years. The team completed work in the Macuaneand Tuane minefields and handed them back to the community in late July. August began preparations for the new minefield in Limpopo and in October we officially started demining the Limpopo minefield and have already founda number of mines and detonators. Currently, the HeroRAT team there isclearing an average of 2000 square meters per day and work in this minefield will carry us through next year. We look forward to keeping you updated onour progress there. Congrats to all for achievements thus far.

The villagers in the surrounding area have had a number of accidents and wespoke with a few of them to share their story and get to know those the staff and HeroRATs will be helping. One of their stories is featured in thisnewsletter and more may follow in future newsletters. We also have a new Program Manager in Mozambique that we wanted tointroduce you to and will be introducing you to a number of the staff on boardin both Mozambique and Tanzania through future newsletters. On those samelines APOPO and HeroRATs have been fortunate to establish a number of partnerships with fantastic organizations like Roots & Shoots and others whose missions are in line with ours and we’d like to introduce you to thoseorganizations as well.Finally, a number of people have expressed interest in giving HeroRATs asgifts this holiday season! We thank you for thinking of us and wanted to offersome simple tips to make sharing HeroRATs with your friends and family thisholiday season as easy as possible. Thank you to all for your support over the years, we have created a number of systems this year to make sure we do a better job of keeping you involved and up-to-date. We look forward to keeping you abreast of all that is going on here on the ground in Tanzania,Mozambique and in the other locations we will expand to in the future. Youremails and support make a great difference to us, our staff, and our HeroRATs(of course). Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Herorats Make Great Gifts for the Holiday Season

APOPO's HeroRATs have been a big hit this holiday season! Featured in the Washington Post Holiday Gift Guide, Alternative Gift Fair in Tacoma Park,Maryland and more! We are delighted our supporters are sharing theirsupport and enthusiasm with their friends, family and co-workers. If you wishto adopt a HeroRAT as a gift please just follow the steps for adopting thehero of your choice at www.herorat.org. Then just send an email toherorats@herorat.org with the full name (for the adoption certificate) of thegift recipient, and the email you would like the materials sent to. If you areadopting a number of HeroRATs for gifts please just include which hero goes with each recipient. If donations are more your speed, please check out ourlist of foundations that will accept tax deductable donations on our behalf. If

you have any questions or need any assistance, please do not hesitate to sendus a mail at herorats@herorat.org. Happy Holidays from all of us here at APOPO!

APOPO receives prestigious Skoll Award

APOPO has been selected as a recipient of the three-year, $1,000,000 awardfrom the Skoll Foundation to further sustainable growth of the APOPOorganization and its activities in Africa. The Skoll Awards for SocialEntrepreneurship is presented by the Skoll Foundation to recognize the mostinnovative and sustainable approaches to resolving the most urgent socialissues. APOPO joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, now numbering 61, who are working around the world on issues includingtolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace andsecurity, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.“We’ve very pleased to add APOPO to the community of Skoll socialenterprises,” said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. APOPO is another example of the growing momentum of the socialentrepreneurial model around the world, where innovative, driven individualsand their organizations are finding sustainable solutions to complex socialchallenges. Social entrepreneurs are showing that grassroots action candeliver systemic change, solving problems at their core rather than justhelping alleviate symptoms.” Bart Weetjens will be presented the award at theSkoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University nextspring. The three-day World Forum will be comprised of over 700 attendeesfrom the global social entrepreneurship community.

Spotlight on Mozambique: Meet Francisco Tivane

In 2006, at the age of 51 Francisco Tivane was building his first house for hischild and himself; a single father in the Ndonga village of the Limpopo region(Mozambique). He was cutting tree branches to build the structure when hislife was forever altered. He stepped on a landmine and fell unconscious because of his injuries. Thankfully a friend was nearby and carried him to thenearest medical center in the village. Francisco remained there in intensivetreatment for just under 2 months and due to his severe injuries his right leg was amputated.