Volunteering with the "Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation"

First of all, I only volunteered with BOSF for 2 months in their head office of Bogor, Indonesia.

I was helping with fundraising and communication, mostly by writing articles for the French market, trying to bring awareness about the organization work here in Indonesia. I also participated in some "school visits" where BOSF would talk to children about orangutans and why it is vital to protect them.

It was an incredible experience and I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to be part of such a wonderful organization.

BOSF is doing an incredible job because not only they rescue orangutans in Borneo but they also take care of them and rehabilitate them to make sure that they will live freely again and not live their lives in cages or kept as pets.

A baby orangutan depends on his mother to survive for the first 6-7 years of its life! They learn how to climb trees, how to find their food in the forest, how to escape dangerous predators. All of these skills need to be acquired and this is why at BOSF, the baby orangutans are being taken every day to a "forest school" where they get to learn all the skills that their mothers would have taught them in the wild.

It takes time but the efforts pay off eventually, because one by one, all of these orangutans will be set free, once the team is convinced that they are independent and capable enough to survive in the forest on their own. It's such a joyful moment to see a orangutan being released, they are being transported miles away from any human settlement to make sure they are as safe as possible, then the cage opens and they run for the trees, free.

Sometimes someone calls BOSF because they spotted a orangutan on a oil plantation, wandering lost and hungry, and the team has to hurry and rescue the animal before someone hurts him.

Orangutans are endangered and protected by laws but unfortunately, the laws are not always respected in Indonesia, that's the challenges that BOSF has to face, trying to protect these beautiful creatures. They are truly amazing animals. They share 97% of their DNA with us, maybe that's why they feel like family.

But their forests are being destroyed because of illegal logging and huge area are being turned into oil palm plantations or other forms of agriculture. And sometimes, like in 2015, insane forest fires destroy everything. Orangutans depend on their forests and a healthy forest needs orangutans, they are part of a complex ecosystem, they depend on each other, and we, humans, despite what some of us sometimes think, also depend of the forests and the wildlife.

The good news, you can help, you can do something, the truth is, you should!

First, you can donate to organizations like BOSF, because they depend entirely on donations. You can talk about the issue around you, make sure people are aware of what's happening there, it concerns us all. Finally, you can also reduce your consumption of products with palm oil, demand some brands stop using palm oil, sign petitions, boycott, money is a powerful weapon and consumers have that power if they decide to act together.

A single drop of water creates the mighty ocean.

http://orangutan.or.id/