MOM Campaign

Gober and the Twins ~ © SOCP/Jessica McKelson

What is the MOM Campaign?

Mother’s Day is the perfect day to celebrate and pay tribute to orangutan mothers. The MOM – Missing Orangutan Mothers Campaign is our way of doing precisely that! The MOM Campaign is a positive way to bring attention to the crisis facing these beautiful red apes by encouraging people to help protect them.

Orangutan mothers and babies have an incredibly close relationship. Baby orangutans don’t have a support network around to give them the many lessons of finding food, building nests and other survival skills. Their mothers teach them everything about survival in the forest before they set out on their own. Because of the growing demand for palm oil, though, more and more orangutan mothers are being killed every year on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

The orangutans’ rainforest home is literally being wiped out to make way for oil palm plantations– leaving hundreds of helpless orangutans with nowhere to go. Some of the lucky ones end up at rescue and rehabilitation centers and are cared for by a trained, professional staff. Orangutan Outreach works with professional organizations such as the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), International Animal Rescue (IAR) and the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation to care for more than 1,000 orphaned and displaced orangutans! That’s a lot of missing orangutan mothers!

This Mother’s Day, we are asking zoos, animal facilities, groups and individuals all around the world to participate in our MOM Campaign and hold their own events. These events can be as elaborate or as simple as you’d like. It’s up to you!

2013 Poster Girl

The 2013 MOM Campaign Poster features Gober and the Twins. Gober is an elderly Sumatran female from an area consisting of rubber plantations and fruit agriculture, completely surrounded and isolated from native forest by intensive monoculture oil palm plantations. When Gober went blind (due to age-related cataracts), she began raiding crops and the villagers asked SOCP to remove her from the site. Gober entered the SOCP quarantine centre in November 2008. Kept alone at first, in 2009 she was gradually introduced to another blind orangutan, a male named Leuser, and in 2010 they were housed together. Unexpectedly, Gober fell pregnant and in February 2011 delivered healthy twins – a male and female. The male’s name is Ganteng (meaning “handsome”) and the female is Ginting (a common family/clan name from the local quarantine area). The infants are thriving under Gober’s care; she is doing a perfect job of rearing them. The intention is to carefully reintroduce Gober and the twins to father Leuser, very gradually, to minimize the risk of accidental injury to the infants. In 2012, following a surgical procedure on her cataracts, Gober’s sight was partially restored! Stay tuned for more news on these amazing orangutans…

Who’s Participating?

How Do I Join the MOM Campaign?

If you’d like to participate in our Mother’s Day event, please let us know. We will do our best to help you in every way possible.

We want to stress that this not specifically a fundraising campaign. The goal is to raise awareness that orangutans have been pushed to the brink of extinction in the wild and that if we don’t act now to save them, they will be extinct in less than a decade. HOWEVER, if a collection jar is put out or you choose to include a fundraiser in order to make a donation or adopt an orphan orangutan through Orangutan Outreach, we would, of course, be thrilled. (We are a tax exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.) Why not raise funds to adopt an orangutan for your own institution or group? This is a great way to follow the life of an orangutan & stay involved with the tireless work being carried out at the rescue centers!

Guidelines - If you have a MOM event, we ask that you please mention Orangutan Outreach and encourage your visitors to go to our website to learn more about orangutans and what can be done to help them. We also ask that whenever possible you please mention the projects and groups we support, such as IAR Ketapang and BOS Nyaru Menteng and Earth 4 Orangutans!

We would love for zoo visitors to feel inspired so that they go home, log onto our website and adopt an orangutan! But there are no obligations or expectations. This is primarily an attempt to raise much needed awareness.

Questions or Comments?

If you have any questions, please contact us!

Thank you so much!   Holly, Colleen & Rich

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Orangutan Action Packs (Free Downloadable Materials!)

We have photos, flyers, info sheets, posters, games, quizzes, pictures and adoption leaflets all at your disposal. The pictures alone will tell the whole story! Everything is yours to use as you see fit! All of these full color documents and banners are yours to download and use to help raise awareness of the crisis facing wild orangutans. We will be constantly updating this section, so keep checking back. Check out the ORANGUTAN ACTION PACKS

Lots more information, display files and event ideas here.

Check out highlights from the 2011 MOM Campaign!

Check out highlights from the 2012 MOM Campaign on the Orangutan Outreach Pinterest page!

THANK YOU!

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the MOM Campaign. It was a huge success! Between all the zoos and animal centers that took part, we were able to talk to thousands of people about orangutans and explain how critical it is to protect them and their forest home.  {:(|}

Orangutan lives are at stake! We must act NOW!

Please note: Orangutan Outreach is not responsible for the content on external websites. For information about exchanging links or to report broken links, please email us.

The 2012 MOM Campaign was dedicated to a very special baby orangutan named Luna. This precious angel ‘disappeared’ under very suspicious circumstances from her rescue center last year…. Luna shall remain in our hearts forever. We will never forget her.  Learn more about the tragic loss of Baby Luna.