April 2009 Newsletter

Contents

• Introduction
• APOPO and founder recognized at Skoll World Forum
• APOPO named an inaugural member of ‘Phoenix 50 List'
• Interview with the President of the Board: Mic Billet
• Photography contest finalist focuses on landmines and APOPO
• Support APOPO's Work

Introduction

We hope our April newsletter finds you well. Everything is continuing well
with everyone here at APOPO and HeroRATs in Tanzania and Mozambique.

In Landmine detection, 2 rats passed their final tests in field training in

March. In Tuberculosis detection, our HeroRATs detected 61 patients missed
by microscopy.

Bart Weetjens, founder of APOPO, was invited to the Skoll World Forum held
at the Saïd Business School at University of Oxford from March 25th to March
27th. He officially received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship
during the forum. He was also invited to speak on the prestigious Innovators
in Action panel to discuss ways in which innovations are helping the
healthcare industry.

Also at the Skoll World Forum, APOPO was announced part of the inaugural
'Phoenix 50 List' of enterprises, corporations and government agencies
making sustainable changes in the world.
In other news, we are happy to present an interview with the President of
APOPO’s Board, Mic Billet.

Thank you for your continued support! We wish you the best this month.

APOPO and founder recognized at Skoll World Forum

From March 25th to March 27th, the world’s leading social entrepreneurs,
academics, economists, funders and policy-makers gathered at the Saïd
Business School, University of Oxford. This year’s theme was “Shifting Power
Dynamics.” Close to 800 delegates, including our very own Bart Weetjens,
discussed and explored how social entrepreneurs are able to access, navigate
and influence power dynamics to create sustainable change throughout the
world.

Some of the speakers at the forum included the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize
Winner, Dr. R. K. Pachauri; Canadian advocate for indigenous rights Chief
Judith Sayers; Charles Leadbeater, UK Government advisor and leading
global authority on innovation and creativity; and Raghda el-Ebrashi, a
leading social entrepreneur who is pioneering a new approach to community
development in marginalized neighborhoods of Cairo.

During the awards ceremony, The Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship
was officially presented to Weetjens and APOPO. The Skoll Awards for Social
Entrepreneurship is presented by the Skoll Foundation to recognize the most
innovative and sustainable approaches to resolving the most urgent social
issues. APOPO joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, now
numbering 61, who are working around the world on issues including
tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and
security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.

Weetjens was one of four social entrepreneurs asked to speak on the

Innovators in Action panel. His fellow panelists included the world-renowned
social entrepreneurs Gene Falk, Co-founder of mothers2mothers, Paul
Farmer, Founder of Partners in Health, and Nathan Wolfe, Founder of Global
Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI). The gap between rich and poor is manifest
in any number of ways, particularly in healthcare, where governments and
markets have failed the most vulnerable populations. Weetjens and fellow
panelists each discussed their own simple, scalable approaches to improve
healthcare delivery, prevention and education.

APOPO named an inaugural member of ‘Phoenix 50 List'

APOPO was nominated and accepted into the 'Phoenix 50 List' by Volans and
SustainAbility networks. The 'Phoenix 50 List' highlights enterprises,
corporations and government agencies making significant contributions
toward building more equitable, more sustainable global economy. The
Phoenix project seeks to identify the 50 businesses, organizations and
government institutions that will rise after the current economic recession: “A
new economic order is rising form the ashes—and a new generation of
innovators, entrepreneurs and investors is accelerating the changes essential
for delivering scalable sustainable solutions to the world.” The list also points
out that small enterprises are incredibly important in this new economic
order, “But even solutions developed by tiny enterprises can vault to the point
of addressing macro issues, like APOPO with its ‘sniffer rats’ hunting out
landmines, helping to underscore the significance of the multi-dimensional
security agenda” (The Phoenix Economy: 50 Pioneers in the Business of Social
Innovation).

APOPO and the other named organizations were officially presented at the
Skoll World Forum 2009. Others on the Phoenix 50 list include Google,
Ashoka, The Grameen Group, and Mothers2Mothers. More about the Phoenix
List and Phoenix economy can be found on the Volans website. The report can
be found here.

Interview with the President of the Board: Mic Billet

Mic Billet is a very active retired professor who spends most of his free time
acting as the President of APOPO in Belgium and Tanzania. Mic Billet has
been happily married to his wife Nan since 1964 and has 3 grown, successful
children. Before acting as the President of the Board for APOPO, Billet created
documentaries in Belgium with Belgian Radio and Television for twenty years.
He was already very active in social issues and created the first documentary
on sexual abuse in Belgium; he also created other documentaries creating
awareness about many social issues. Through this work, Mic Billet had a
unique perspective of creating systems to not just help victims, but to stop
creating victims through protecting people and through solidarity. After this
work, Billet began a long teaching career at the University of Antwerp, where
he started the Department of Product Design.

Bart Weetjens, the founder of APOPO, and Christophe Cox, the CEO of
APOPO, did their master’s theses under Billet’s guidance at the University of
Antwerp. After a few years, Bart Weetjens came to talk to Billet about the
global anti-personal landmine problem. Billet encouraged Weetjens to inform
himself about anti-personal landmines. Through the process of talking to
Billet and informing himself, Weetjens developed the initial idea of using rats
to detect landmines. Since then, Billet has been the President of the Board and
very active in APOPO. Billet has been instrumental in the development and
growth of APOPO as the President of the Board and General Assembly. He
enjoys working with APOPO because he believes in impact of APOPO’s work
and sees the sustainable difference APOPO can make in the world.

When Mic Billet was asked what he has learned through his long and rich life,
he said, “My life experience taught me to be correct to your neighbor, to be
honest to your neighbor, to give to chances to people, and to realize solidarity.
If you are doing all of this, then of course you have to do your job in life
correctly. That is what is important to me.”

Photography contest finalist focuses on landmines and APOPO

As many of you may have noticed on our blog, 2 APOPO supporters, Allan E.
Schoening and Blessing Marie, recently entered a photography contest
sponsored by National Geographic called the “Name Your Dream
Assignment.” The contest provides $50,000 USD to document any cause of
their choice. Their dream assignment is to travel to specific regions of the
world and to document the destruction land mines cause, highlight demining
organizations and administer aid to victims of landmines. With your
assistance, Schoening and Marie have received enough public votes in the first
stage of the “Name your Dream Assignment,” to put them in the top twenty
and move them onto the next stage in the contest! In the next section of the
competition, professional photographers and photojournalists will review all
of the ideas and pick the winner. The winners of this competition will receive
$50,000 to make their dream assignment come true.
Schoening and Marie have chosen APOPO’s work as one of the feature
demining organizations they wish to document as a part of their dream
assignment. If they win, they hope to travel to Mozambique to tell more
people about APOPO’s work and the HeroRATs. The winner will be
announced in the next month. The HeroRATs team wishes Schoening and
Marie all the best in the next part of the competition!

Support APOPO’s Work

APOPO’s staff and HeroRATs are working hard to save lives and limbs from
disaster and disease. For information about the work we are doing, or to
contribute to the HeroRATs cause, please visit www.herorat.org.