Landmines injure thousands and tuberculosis kills millions. Bart realized that the sense of smell of the rats he kept as pets could be used to sniff out mines and disease and founded APOPO with his former schoolmate Christophe Cox. While they might be small, these HeroRATs are saving many lives.
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Bart Weetjens
Bart Weetjens is a Zen priest, renowned social entrepreneur and holds a Masters in Product Design from Antwerp University. In 1997, he founded APOPO with his former schoolmate Christophe Cox, which saves human lives from disaster and disease by training giant pouched rats to use their powers of detection. He was selected as an ASHOKA fellow and a SCHWAB fellow to the World Economic Forum and won the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2009. He also joined The Wellbeing Project and co-founded lagrandeterre.org, a permaculture/wellbeing center.
APOPO
APOPO is a global non-profit organization that researches, develops, and implements scent detection technology to combat global humanitarian issues. It’s CEO, Christophe Cox is a former schoolmate of Bart’s and they launched APOPO together. APOPO’s detection rats currently unearth landmines and sniff out tuberculosis in affected countries around the world. The rats are trained through clicker/reward methods, receiving tasty food treats when they identify explosives or tuberculosis. They are never harmed because they are too light to actually set off any landmines and are cared for under strict animal welfare guidelines.
APOPO has humanitarian demining programs in Angola, Cambodia and Mozambique and is preparing operations in Zimbabwe. APOPO also detects tuberculosis in Tanzania, Mozambique and Ethiopia. APOPO’s Training and Research Center is in Tanzania.