Last week at our monthly business meeting, members of Veterans For Peace Chapter 72 voted to adopt a HeroRat.
Back in December I wrote about these wonderful little guys in my diary, Quit Dissing Rats. They're Heroes.
Our rat is below the symbol once know as "read more".
Meet "Ziko", one of the HeroRats that can be adopted.
One of our members who lives on the Oregon coast after reading an email announcing our adoption, decided to adopt a HeroRat too. He adopted
"Chosen One".
The cost to our chapter per month to adopt Ziko was only $3.60 (5 Euros), a small price for the service they provide and meets this part of our mission statement..
(d) To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
Why did we adopt a HeroRat?
HeroRATs are saving lives, sniffing out dangers such as landmines and disease. We are true heroes, working hand-in-hand with humans to create safer communities and a better world. A fully-trained HeroRAT can identify landmines quickly and efficiently, or can sniff out deadly pulmonary tuberculosis faster than traditional laboratory microscopy. Not only that, we work for peanuts!
In short, HeroRATs provide a simple, innovative solution to some of the complex global problems facing humankind today. By working together, we can save even more lives and limbs.
HeroRATs is a public campaign to raise awareness about APOPO's work. APOPO's mission is to train and disseminate sniffer rats to save human lives by detecting landmines and disease.
The Economist Magazine did a 7 min documentary you can watch on Youtube here.
Meet the Hero Rats who love to play hide and seek amongst landmines and unexploded bombs, and treasure hunt for positive TB samples. Apopo, a Belgian charity is harnessing the sociability, enthusiasm for repetitive tasks, love of bananas and acute sense of smell of the African Giant Pouched rat to uncover killers.
Working in Mozambique and Tanzania (with plans to establish operations in Colombia and South East Asia) Apopo has already cleared large areas of unexploded ordinance and detected TB in hundreds of samples missed by more costly conventional testing
How we adopted Ziko.