Jane Goodall: A Little Help Can Mean A Lot

By Mark Hrywna

The man risked his life for a chimpanzee. Having watch as the chimp fell into the water at a zoo, the man dove in after the chimp to fish him out, only to see him slide back into the water off a steep slope. His family screaming frantically on the side, a group of chimpanzees racing toward him to investigate, the man risked his life again for the chimp.

Asked later why he risked his life to save the chimp, the man replied that it was like looking into the eyes of another man, and the look was, “Won’t anyone help me?” Jane Goodall has seen that look in the eyes of chimpanzees used in medical research or hunted for meat and in the eyes of chained elephants, but also in the eyes of homeless people and in the eyes of street children.

Goodall, world-renowned conservationist and inspiration for the 1980s film, “Gorillas in the Mist,” relayed this story during the J. Richard Wilson Keynote Address on Monday morning at the 45th annual International Conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) in San Diego.

“I haven’t been anywhere in the world where compassionate people do not try to help,” Goodall said, describing people who are tackling seemingly insurmountable problems. But it makes all the difference to raise a small amount of money in the United States that can go a long way in places like Africa, she said.

Greeted by a standing ovation from several thousand fundraisers, Goodall reciprocated with a chimpanzee greeting of grunts and sounds. The author of “Reason for Hope,” she related numerous stories of inspirational people she has met in her travels around the world during her nearly hour-long address, including a 25-year-old blind magician who gave her the mascot that accompanied her on the podium, a stuffed animal chimpanzee.

It was fundraising and philanthropy that first allowed Goodall to travel to Tanzania in the summer of 1960 to study chimpanzees. A businessman from Des Moines, Iowa, provided the initial funding for what was a six-month study. “That’s where I got the money -- philanthropy -- that’s supported me in the past,” she said. Eventually, the National Geographic Society provided support for Goodall’s research, which today is the longest unbroken study of animals in the world. She has since established the Gombe Stream Research Center in 1964 and eventually founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977.