Jane Goodall’s Message Of Hope

By Laurie Borst

It was a rainy Friday morning — April 27 — when Dr Jane Goodall arrived at the Western Connecticut Academy of International Studies, the magnet school located on Western Connecticut State University’s westside campus. Despite the gloomy weather outside, when she entered the conference room, she turned off the lights and opened the blinds. It is a new campaign of hers, she explained, an “every little bit helps” philosophy.

The students, kindergarten through fourth grade, had been participating in Roots & Shoots activities and shared information about their work with Dr Goodall.

Roots & Shoots is an educational program developed by Dr Goodall. Preschools through universities sponsor groups that focus on environmental issues. Roots & Shoots began in 1991 with a small group of Tanzanian students. Today, Roots & Shoots has 8,000 groups in 96 countries.

These student groups select projects based on what is needed where they live. From picking up trash and recycling phone books to collecting school supplies, young people put their minds to the issues that affect their own communities.

Through Roots & Shoots, students can make global connections through contacts with other groups. Even in the refugee camps in parts of Africa, groups have formed that raise money to buy chickens for their egg production, to both eat and sell, and they have planted vegetable gardens.

At the magnet school, one big project the students are working on is to restore the land around the school to its natural state, as it was before construction. The students had raised money to purchase three pear trees. They had hoped that Dr Goodall could take part in a groundbreaking ceremony that morning, but the rain derailed that event.

After the program at the magnet school, Dr Goodall and her group moved to the O’Neill Center, also on WCSU’s westside campus. Assembled there were a number of Roots & Shoots groups from around the Northeast, including Maine, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Danbury, Bethel, and Brookfield.

Students shared their projects, which included catching and spaying feral cats, raising funds to purchase livestock through Heifer International, and purchasing wheelchairs for polio victims in Tanzania.

The groups displayed posters that showed the research the students have done, including natural ways to nourish the skin, fair trade and sweatshops, conscious consumerism, and saving the forests

When the student presentations concluded, Dr Goodall took the floor. The audience listened intently as she shared her thoughts and observations. Dr Goodall told of her 46 years at Gombe Stream Research Center. In her time there, she has seen deforestation’s disastrous effects on the chimpanzees and other animals in the area.

“The rainforests are the lungs of the world,” she said, “and they are disappearing fast.”

She spoke of the peculiar weather patterns we are experiencing, citing the heat wave in April in her native England this year.

One student asked Dr Goodall about her dreams.

“When I was 8 years old, I dreamed of going to Africa, which was called the ‘Dark Continent’ then. People said to me, ‘Why don’t you dream about something you can really do,’” Dr Goodall explained. “My mother said, ‘Don’t give up. If you really, really want it, you will find a way.’”

Which is exactly what she did. She worked jobs as a waitress and a secretary to save up money to travel to Africa. At the age of 23, she traveled by boat by herself to Tanzania. When she arrived in Africa, a friend helped her get a job with the renowned paleoanthropologist Dr Louis Leakey.

Dr Leakey realized Dr Goodall’s strengths and offered her a job studying chimpanzees in the forests of Tanzania, on Lake Tanganyika. That was in June 1960. Five years later Dr Goodall established Gombe Stream Research Center. Forty-seven years after she first entered the forest, research continues at Gombe, making it one of the longest ongoing studies of a species.

Today, Dr Goodall spreads a message of hope for the future.

“We are growing a group of young people around the world who realize life is not about making money, it’s about making the world better,” she said. “We need to help people find ways to save the rainforest, find ways to survive and preserve the forests.”

Dr Goodall spoke about peace doves and the United Nations Peace Day, which is celebrated on September 23. Behind the audience, a large, white cloth dove leaned against the wall. These giant peace doves are flown all around the world on Peace Day and bells, made from discarded ammunitions and guns, are played. In April 2002, then-Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Dr Goodall to serve as a United Nations “Messenger of Peace.”

When asked what keeps her going, she replied, “These kids, and my grandchildren. The rainforest is disappearing, spiraling downward fast. The older I get, the more pressure I feel. I’m not slowing down, I’m speeding up.”

Which chimp made the biggest impression on her? “David Greybeard, of course. And then there’s Flo, and Fifi. I had a long time friendship with Fifi,” she said.

Unlike other animal researchers, Dr Goodall gave all her study subjects names, rather than traditional, impersonal numbers.

David Greybeard was the first chimpanzee that ever approached Dr Goodall at Gombe. When she first entered the forest in 1960, the study was supposed to last six months. It took almost that long to even find chimps to which she could get close. After months of patient observation, David Greybeard finally took a banana from her in her camp. Slowly, other chimps came to trust her.

Flo was a great matriarch in chimp society. She was a very successful mother, raising five chimps, one of them being Fifi. Fifi has raised nine offspring, having learned good parenting skills from her mother.