Last week I wanted to focus on Spring Negra, which meant there were some photos that didn’t make the cut for the blog. Luckily, I just remembered them! Look no further than the end of this post for the non-Negra photos from last week’s lunch forage.
But first, a word about volunteers.
Probably everyone reading this knows that the pandemic has drastically reduced the number of volunteers that are onsite helping with the daily operations of the sanctuary. There are currently just two volunteers who have basically been additional part-time staff members, cleaning alongside us and trying to keep up with Burrito. We owe them a huge amount of gratitude for all of the hours they’ve worked.
In addition to halting our regular volunteer program, we also put the Central Washington University daily intern shifts on hold until we feel that we can safely loosen restrictions without putting the chimpanzees at risk.
Volunteers and interns have been helping in other important ways, however.
They have been making paper braids in the shed near the chimp house, proof-reading marketing material, delivering totes brimming with lovingly-rolled chow bags, organizing community outreach events like the art contest and upcoming showing at Gallery One in Ellensburg, helping write grant proposals, entering historical medical data into new software, painting mountain murals in the new playrooms (we’ll share photos soon!), helping plan virtual fundraisers (The Queen’s Brunch coming to a computer near you on June 13th), and much more.
While volunteers continue to contribute to the smooth operation and outreach efforts of the sanctuary, our all-volunteer board of directors focuses on the really high-level behind-the-scenes work that you may never even hear about, like creating policies that ensure the sanctuary as an organization can carry on the vision of helping primates for a long time to come.
This strange past year has provided a lot of lessons and new perspectives, but, no matter what, we will remain grateful to those who choose to give their time to help the chimpanzees and bovines too. The sanctuary wouldn’t be what it is today without the unpaid yet hard and important work of so many people.
Thank you all!
Here are those promised photos. This first series is, “Foxie and the Carrot”:
This is simply: “Missy in Profile”
And this I was going to call “Burrito with Tomatoes” but I realize that might be confusing… so perhaps, “Burrito Enjoys a Forage Break” is better:
