A chapter written by Bart Weetjens from the book "Creating Good Work" edited by Ron Schultz. More: www.bububrussels.blogspot.com

1. A chapter by Bart Weetjens from the book "Creating Good Work" edited by Ron Schultz
Insights from the HeroRATs experience into how disruptive technology can create a more
sustainable enterprise.
The roots of Apopo began sprouting when I saw the dependence of African communities living in post-
conflict areas. There was a dependence on expensive know-how and technology to help rid their
landscape from the destruction of landmines. It also lay in the unfairness of how we as a human
society have evolved, and what we evolved into, with huge differences between the wealthy and the
unfortunate. This is especially true when looking at the dependence of African communities on foreign
input to create the most basic circumstances for development which are simply not available. So in
starting Apopo, I put myself in the situation of a subsistence farmer in an African village, unable to
access his farmlands because they are filled with landmines. And I began looking at what these
people had at hand and what resources could be utilized to tackle the problem of these buried
landmines more independently. And while rats are plentiful everywhere, I didn't immediately get to
that solution. I wanted to deal with the dependency and empower these people, and make us equal.
My social commitment was something that was always a part of my life. Being born in a middle-class
Belgian family I had the experience of being in a world where nothing was lacking and where
everything was possible. And yet at the same time, spending time in Africa and constantly seeing a
miserable world - poverty really is an ugly monster with many heads – my direction almost defined
itself. Empathy is very real for me and the skills developed through both my Buddhist and Christian
values allowed me to commit socially. I think the third cornerstone that drove my work was having the
good fortune to grow-up in an extremely stimulating environment. My parents were both socially
committed, both teachers, now retired. But they spent a life in service to community. There was also
the excellent mentorship of my professors at Antwerp University and dear friends, artists, and people
who inspired me. I grew-up in a very well-taken-care-of environment.
Often it is in the most difficult circumstances that we come to our defining moments. And in my case,
this was after graduating cum laude grande at Antwerp, where I was very much liked by my
professors. After I left university, I started working in industry, and had several experiences in various
industries for a couple of years, but nothing satisfied me. I looked at life as a much more holistic
experience than what I found in the corporate world. I needed things to fit for me, to have my body
and mind in line, to be able to be happy. I didn’t want to contribute to that system. So I started
painting.
During my second exhibition, I invited Mic Billit, my mentor at Antwerp, who was also the director of
the school, to attend the show. He was really surprised that I’d become an artist, and he asked me, “Is
this really what you want?" I hadn’t expected his question and I remember saying, "Well, is it really
what I dream? I don't know." He said, "You know what? Let's have lunch together."
We went out for a very simple lunch-- a sandwich on a bench -- somewhere in the heart of Antwerp,
and he said, "Okay, if you don't want to contribute to industry, what do you want to do?" I told him I
had always had an interest in Africa, and in appropriate technologies. And he asked, "What kind of
problem would you like to tackle?" At that time, there was a great deal in the media about land mines.

2. A chapter by Bart Weetjens from the book "Creating Good Work" edited by Ron Schultz
And at that moment, it just came out of me. "Land mines. That's a real problem. It's a structural
barrier to development. Maybe that could be something." And Mic said, "Okay, so here’s what you do
from now on. You continue painting half-time, and the other half you start making an analysis of that
problem according to the design approach you have learned in product design school." And in that
moment, I was suddenly headed in a new direction.
Not too long after that, I was attending a conference in Edinburgh on new landmine detection
technologies and I met a fellow product designer from Holland. We went out to a local pub and it
turned out that he had a grant from the Dutch government to do exactly the same work I was doing -
analyzing the landmine problem. And he was using the same design approach, with the same vision
of appropriate technology that I was. It was a great encounter. As it turned out, he was at the end of
his study, and was leaving all of it to go into architecture. And so right there in the pub, he handed his
work over to me. And as I was going through it, I saw an article by Biederman and Weinstein, two
scientists who had trained gerbils to detect explosives. They hadn’t done so in a sustainable way—
they had attached electrodes to the brain of the gerbils—which was really not the way forward for my
action for empowering communities in Africa, but it gave me evidence that rats could smell explosives.
And there was the total aha in that pub in Edinburgh.
Together with my mentor, Mic Billet, I had already created a nonprofit that supported a school in
Kenya, with a few more people working there, now. So I already had a team around me, and had
created a very small scale organization. I was also lucky that one of the professors on my team
became the vice chancellor of Antwerp University. He was well-connected with development
corporations, and through his networks we actually got our first research grant to try and train rats
In assembling this project, I learned early on to install organizational procedures and managerial
teams, and to let go of things. The second thing I learned was that I had to be adaptive. I've noticed
that the same principles which apply in evolution theory apply to organizations, where whomever
becomes rigid in their thinking or dogmatic is not going to survive. Especially within social and
environmental nonprofits, people need to be adaptive to survive-- it's not survival of the fittest, but of
the most adaptive, which is the real meaning Darwin had in mind. That same principle applies in this
context. It's a lesson I had to learn, to constantly and continually challenge our perception about all
the resources we have around us-- our human resources, our technologies, our animals, the
environment and all the environmental factors that we can respectfully use. But then it’s not only
challenging our perceptions, but-- absolutely crucial-- respectfully harmonizing with them. Letting that
dialog go between your inner and outer worlds, and be genuine for it to happen. The fewest
obstructions we can create with our own opinions, the social change we are looking for can happen.
It's a question of allowing it to happen.
Of course, within the social entrepreneurial world there is a lot of ego involved. Nowadays, we get all
these accolades and recognition, but we have to be absolutely humble. There is no reason for us to
claim ownership. It’s the interdependence of phenomenon that we have to see. And as soon ego
comes in, there will be trouble in the organization.

3. A chapter by Bart Weetjens from the book "Creating Good Work" edited by Ron Schultz
It's interesting to be working with animals, where it's not about ego. They have personality, but
certainly not the ego attachment that we do. And with rats, it's an image issue, too, that many of us
have about rats. But there has been some really compelling research done on rats by Jean Decety at
Chicago University, in which he did an experiment that showed that rats can develop empathy. And
then there’s the love that you get from an animal, whether it’s a dog or a horse or a dolphin or a rat, or
even a cockroach, like in some jails in South Africa. People build an affective bond with these
animals.
One of the obstacles we’ve had to deal with has been the image of rats. And in the early days
especially, there were a lot of difficulties with animal welfare organizations, and even on organization
in New York, Rat & Mouse Gazette, who published a story that we were going to train suicide squads,
kamikaze rat squads. But we have been able to overcome this by showing our care for the animals,
creating the good circumstances we have for them to live in. They have toys and sufficient space,
outside pens. They are working animals, but they are very much taken care of, which is so essential
in the program. There was also a lot of reluctance from the mine action community that we could use
these rats to find the mines. We’re also experiencing something similar now using the rats to detect
people with TB - the medical establishment is even harder to convince about there effectiveness,
even when we have quite compelling statistics. We’ve shown it with over 2400 people.
Changing these perceptions takes a lot of research and very stringent experimental procedures, and
then getting published in the top journals. In the meantime, we're going on, bottom-up, saving lives
and creating the circumstances for people to live better lives. We're not yet at the tipping point of
acceptance, but we've reached a degree of sustainability. We could do a lot more with additional
funding and have a greater impact. But to me, that's not the main concern at this stage. Half of our
income comes through operational contracts-- and the other half comes from grants and donations. At
the same time, I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of our full potential to tackle other social
problems. For instance, there are commercial applications that could be very profitable like the
detection of tobacco. It would create a huge social impact to have a better grip on container transport
of illicitly traded tobacco and contraband. These traffickers are off the radar, and the money that’s
generated her goes to some very unsavory activities like human trafficking, arms trading and
organized crime. So I am convinced that detection of tobacco in harbors might be a very suitable
thing to do. We wouldn’t do it under APOPO, as a not-for-profit, but under a separate structure where
the not-for-profit—where the profit generated automatically feeds into the not-for-profit for the
humanitarian activities.
To do all of this requires team which is absolutely essential for success along with focus, leadership,
and change-making. There's, of course, also a question of time. When you asked what do aspiring
social entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs in general, have to understand-- I think that is what
social entrepreneurs exactly have understood, It's about every time, in every moment, again and
again, whatever difficulty we face, it's always a question of making the right choice, and weighing
those choices against those values and cornerstones of the organization. If we can manage to make
informed decisions related to these societal and environmental values that we share, letting go of our
ego, then it happens in a way that is automatic.