Orangutan, in Indonesian, means ‘person of the forest’. Orangutans are gentle and smart apes who need your help! Their population is becoming smaller and smaller as well their habitat is destroyed to harvest palm oil, timber and paper.
Their home and their play area, the Indonesian & Malaysia rainforest, is chopped away at a whopping 300 hundred football fields an hour! Can you imagine how many trees, orangutans and other animals we are losing in the world?
Orangutans can’t fight back and they are gravely endangered; Sumatran orangutans may no longer be with us at the end of this decade. That is just too soon!
The good news is that helping our fuzzy friends is easy, fun and there’s lots of ways to do it! We call it, Colour It Orange.
You can talk to your mum and dad about Colour It Orange and how you can help orangutans together. You can learn more about orangutans at http://www.education.orangutan.org.au, and even adopt a orphan baby orangutans in Indonesia or Malaysia, so that they can eat lots of food and grow up in a safe environment with other orangutans and hopefully go back to the wild.
Or you can ask your teachers and school to be involved in helping the orangutans. The Colour It Orange website has lots of cool fundraising ideas for your school so that you and all of your friends can help the orangutans together.
Some kids have already organised a fundraising day for their school. They had lots of fun, got to wear casual clothes to school and the best thing is that they are all helping to save the orangutans in the wild!
So what are you waiting for? Just hop on to http://www.education.orangutan.org.au and tell your friends, family and school about them too!
National Children’s Ambassador – Daniel Clarke
Over the past two years of passionately raising money to save the orangutan Daniel has raised over $15,500 and has brought awareness to the plight of the orangutan to all Australians.
The Australian Orangutan Project proudly made Daniel their National Children’s Ambassador in 2007, 2008 & 2009 and is continuing to support Daniel in his quest to educate all of the children in Australia by establishing the national education program called “Colour it Orange”.
For high-resolution images, further information or to arrange an interview with AOP please contact:
Affinity Marketing Ph: 02 8006 5035 Brianna Power 0403 904 912 / brianna@affinitymarketing.com.au
