Mother’s Day, May 13th, 2012
M.O.M. – Missing Orangutan Mothers

2012 Banner Photo of Cheyenne and her adopted little girl Aurora @ The Houston Zoo © Stephanie Adams/Houston Zoo.

2011 Banner Photo courtesy of Evan Hambrick. Orangutans Dee Dee and her little girl RanDee @ Lowry Park Zoo, Tampa, Florida

PLEASE JOIN US to HELP SAVE ORANGUTANS
and their rainforest homes by hosting an event!

Mother's Day is the perfect day to celebrate and pay tribute to orangutan mothers. The M.O.M.– Missing Orangutan Mothers awareness event is our way of doing precisely that!

Even if Mother's Day is not celebrated on this date in your part of the world, you can still join with us on May 13th by participating in this very special awareness campaign. M.O.M. is the perfect way to bring attention to the plight of these beautiful red apes and encourage people to want 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 techniques. Their mothers teach them everything about survival in the forest before they set out on their own but, because of the growing demand for palm oil, more and more orangutan mothers are being killed every year in Indonesia. Their rainforest homes are literally being wiped out to make way for oil palm plantations leaving hundreds of helpless orphans. Some of the lucky ones end up at rescue and rehabilitation centers and, between them, these centers throughout Indonesia and Malaysia are now home to nearly 2000 orphaned and displaced orangutans - that's a lot of missing orangutan mothers!

We are hoping to encourage as many zoos, animal facilities, groups and individuals around the world to hold M.O.M. events. They can be as elaborate or as simple as you like. It's up to you!

If you'd like to participate in this special Mother's Day event, please let us know. We will do our best to help you in every way. Our dedicated volunteer Holly Draluck has generously made herself available to provide event materials and answer any questions. Email her directly at holly@redapes.org.

We want to stress that we are not viewing this as a fundraising campaign. Our intention is to assist in any way possible to facilitate getting the message out that orangutans have been pushed to the brink of extinction in the wild and if we don’t act now, they will be extinct in less than a decade. 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.) We would love for event visitors to feel inspired, go home, log onto our website and adopt an orangutan orphan... But there are no obligations or expectations. This is primarily an attempt to raise much needed awareness.

Thank you so much!   Rich, Holly & Colleen
rich@redapes.org
holly@redapes.org
colleen@redapes.org

Orangutan lives are at stake! The time to act is now!

Free Downloadable Materials

We have 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 take and 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 materials
Lots more information, display files and event ideas here.

Check out the list of 2011 participating facilities.

THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the 2011 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.  {:(|}  

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.