© Kike Arnal
From having their habitats destroyed to pave the way for large-scale development projects or agriculture, to being hunted for food, to being exploited by the entertainment industry —great apes and gibbons face multiple human-made threats to their survival. Fortunately, a growing number of organizations are working to save the world’s remaining nonhuman apes from extinction.
When it comes to making progress, human rights work is often a case of two steps forward, one step back. Perhaps no one knows this better than Arcus’ winter 2019 Social Justice Program grantees, which are working across Africa and the Americas to protect the dignity and advance the rights of LGBTQ people.
Grants awarded in Arcus’ fall Social Justice Program docket to seven organizations will enable Arcus Foundation to reach dozens of small, grassroots groups led by those most impacted by hate violence, discrimination, and marginalization in our focus areas. Continued support for UHAI-EASHRI, a grantmaking organization in Kenya that supports LGBTI groups in East African countries, will not only provide core funding, but also enable those groups to convene at a biennial conference.
Grants awarded in Arcus’ fall funding cycle will support conservation and ape sanctuary organizations to work together to safeguard great apes and gibbons living in their natural habitats. A significant three-year grant to the Pan Eco Foundation will enable an alliance of organizations to collaborate on protecting the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, one of the most important contiguous forest blocks left in Southeast Asia and home to around 85 percent of all remaining wild Sumatran orangutans and important populations of siamang and gibbons.
Much of the work by Arcus’ latest Great Apes & Gibbons grantees focuses on conserving the landscapes where apes—and their human neighbors—live. The Rainforest Action Network’s Leuser Ecosystem Campaign is working to protect the ecological integrity of the Indonesian landscape—both for the local wildlife and people—by building on progress around slowing land conversion for palm oil crop harvests and developing an action planning process for the next five years.
Partners awarded funding support from Arcus’ Social Justice Program this summer are focusing on the rights of the LGBTQ community with an emphasis on building leadership and standing up against violence and bias by media and religious groups, among others. Several grantees, including the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, are seeking to bolster the LGBTQ anti-violence movement in the United States.
