My name is Didi, currently I am the responsible head-keeper at the MONA Foundation, Primate-Rescue Centre for abused primates. I started at MONA in 2007, arriving as a student and volunteer from Austria but decided to stay after getting to know the chimps (once you get to know them it´s hard to leave or turn your back on them).
Honestly after a while they become family and you start to share their joy and suffering and there is little you wouldn´t do to make sure your family is taken care for.
Over the years MONA started to struggle more and more to raise the necessary funding; nearly all through private donations.
A few months ago, someone suggested that we have to do something extreme to get people’s attention, so that´s when they came up with the idea of dressing me up as a monkey and throwing me out of an airplane in order to get the necessary resources for our veterinarian department (there is no social security or insurance for chimps!!!).
They asked me if I would be collaborating in this fundraising campaign and of course I quickly sad yes, but it was only after I agreed that they told me about the part of jumping out of an airplane. It´s not really something I would normally do (and even less, being filmed and dressed up as a monkey), but I guess I can´t go back on my word and MONA really needs the money for medical treatments for the chimps and macaques living at the centre.
But if I have to jump, at least I don´t want to do it by myself so I hope we will raise enough money so that our director Olga also has to jump (she likes the idea even less than me).
So please everyone, dig deep to help the chimps and make Olga jump out of the airplane as well. It is not necessary to donate a lot as long as you and us can convince others to do so as well!!!
For more information you can visit this homepage: http://jumpwithmona.fundaciomona.org/
