Lana works with a newly arrived baby vervet monkey.
Lana Bru, operations business analyst for our Distribution business, says she doesn’t remember what sparked her passion for vervet monkeys. But her love for them runs so deep she spends nearly all her vacation time working with the creatures.
“I grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, and I can assure you, there were no monkeys,” Lana says. “I saw a social media link and started watching the Vervet Forest YouTube series in 2019. Vervets captured my heart. I can't explain why; maybe divine intervention.”
Lana first traveled to Tzaneen, in South Africa’s Limpopo province, in 2020 to volunteer with the Vervet Monkey Foundation, and she’s gone back six times since. The foundation’s work supports 15 troops of vervet monkeys — about 650 individuals — in a sanctuary 275 miles northwest of Johannesburg.
Lana’s work with the foundation is broad, but most of her hands-on time focuses on caring for orphaned babies. Vervets used to be considered vermin, and though South Africa has recently passed laws to make killing them illegal, attitudes haven’t entirely changed. The monkeys are still considered a nuisance, so the foundation often takes in orphaned baby monkeys.
“I time my volunteer visits to be there during baby season, which typically falls between October and January,” Lana says. “The little vervet orphans are a lot like humans. They come in traumatized, and we have to stabilize them and teach them to drink milk out of a bottle before introducing them to a female so they can bond. I also work with adult monkeys that have been wrongly kept as pets to help integrate them back into a troop, which is a long and difficult process.”
Besides spending time with the vervets in South Africa, Lana also set up a U.S.-based nonprofit, Friends of the Vervet Monkey Foundation, to support the group’s work from here. But she usually can’t wait to get back to Tzaneen.
“There are some U.S. states where it’s legal to keep vervet monkeys as pets, but it’s so important to realize they’re not proper pets,” Lana says.
“When I land in Johannesburg, I can't wipe the smile off my face,” Lana says. “There's something special about that country for me. I love the monkeys, and the South African people as well. We work closely together, problem solving and working to improve the foundation’s operations.”
Her work hasn’t gone unnoticed. She received 10 Volunteer of the Year nominations, half of which came from employees at the Vervet Monkey Foundation.
“Lana is not only highly skilled in orphan care, she’s also made it her personal project to share her knowledge with the sanctuary to improve productivity and efficiency,” Hana Bruger, operations manager for the Vervet Monkey Foundation, said in her nomination. “She taught our sanctuary management team the LEAN process and developed ways to make better use of the limited resources available.”
And Lucas Maluleke, local team manager for the foundation, said in his nomination, “I come from a village in rural South Africa. Our education is not that good here. We learn how to read and write, to speak English, but we don’t learn how to work like Lana. With Lana here, I have learned skills I would not learn anywhere else. We are better organized, and that helps us structure our work. She is a role model because she works very hard. I love learning from Lana because it has made such a difference.”
For her dedication to environmental stewardship, Lana was named one of our 2024 Volunteers of the Year. As part of the award recognition, she received a $5,000 TREE-mendous Matching Gifts reward, which she sent to the Vervet Monkey Foundation.
An adoptive vervet mom, Claudette Marie (whom Lana named after her aunt who passed away), snuggles an orphaned baby vervet.
MEET LANA
Tell us about your day job.
I serve on a five-person operations team that supports distribution centers across the country to improve safety, innovation and general operational efficiency. I've always had a passion for LEAN operations and continuous improvement.
What motivates you to volunteer?
I love monkeys, but I also love the fact that the local workers benefit from my time at the Vervet Monkey Foundation. They truly feel like family, and I want to help them realize how important they are to the monkeys and to the volunteers who visit. The busy baby season is especially stressful for the staff and management team, and I like knowing that I bring experience. And I get so much out of it because I grow with my time there. We're all supposed to do something on this earth to help others. And to me, that's part of what volunteering is.
What are the community challenges you see that you're trying to address with this work?
Climate is changing; 11 monkeys recently passed away from heat-related stress, so there's that side to it. But there's also the human-wildlife conflict. Wildlife in Africa is treated differently there than it is here, and farmers can sometimes have a jaded view of vervet monkeys. They think they eat their crops, but the vervets play an important role in the environmental cycle. The foundation works to help change attitudes.
What’s your favorite part of volunteering?
I love the connection I make with individual orphan monkeys. I go back year after year, and when I visit the troop, they still know who I am. To see them grow and to be safe and secure and not have to worry about that human-wildlife conflict is everything to me. When I see them thriving, it brings me enormous pleasure.
What’ve you learned by volunteering?
It's changed me in an enormous number of ways. It feels like it's a part of me that I found, and every time I leave there, I leave a little bit of my heart. But it's also given me a huge understanding of South Africa. The people there are amazing; many of the people I work with don't have much, but they're incredibly happy. Sometimes it's hard for me to adjust, coming back to the U.S. with everything that we have, and seeing people who may not be as grateful as they should be.
What’s next in your volunteer plans for the year ahead?
You never know what changes life may bring, but my intent is to go back again this year.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to give back but doesn't know how/where?
Find your passion — and remember it can come in the most unexpected places like mine did. Find what touches your heartstrings, what you're capable of. You can start out small or take a big leap like I did, going by myself to a foreign country.
How are you distributing your $5,000 TREE-Mendous Matching Gifts grant?
Well, you probably already guessed — it’s gone to the monkeys, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Since COVID, the Vervet Monkey Foundation has had a decline in volunteers, who provide a big part of funding. This money will be very useful to support the foundation’s day-to-day operations.
