Volunteers to Vegans

Vegetarian communal living is a part of the Jungle Friends experience for interns and volunteers from around the world. As part of the sanctuary culture, people are encouraged to adopt a vegan lifestyle, to have compassion for all of the Earth's remarkable inhabitants, and to join us in hope that these individual acts of kindness across species will one day reach the critical mass or "tipping point" needed to transform the world.

Jungle Friends' "Volunteers to Vegans" initiative combines our primary mission to help primates with our passion to promote a compassionate vegan lifestyle.

When volunteer groups come to the sanctuary, we reward their hard work with a scrumptious vegan meal. A Well-Fed World has awarded Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary a Food For Thought grant, which enables us to offer appetizing, healthy vegan meals to our guests after our Special Volunteer Days. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce non-vegetarians to the delicious world of vegan food and provides a great forum to discuss the many aspects of veganism and to promote a more compassionate lifestyle.

Upcoming Events


Volunteers celebrates Florida Week for The Animals with an Expansion Project work day!

On February 12th, our volunteer groups celebrated Florida Week for the Animals by building new habitats for the Jungle Friends monkeys.


Great American Meatout
Special Volunteer Day


March 20, 2010

A group from the University of Florida along with a number of individual volunteers joined us to make The Great American Meatout a rousing success. The Great American Meatout is the world's largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign. Meatout 2010 is the 25th Anniversary! Our volunteers did
everything from building a habitat to washing the monkey dishes, and topped off the afternoons work with an awesome meal from chef Claude -- all vegan of course and concluded with a screening of EARTHLINGS. Vegan meals were sponsored by A Well-Fed World.


A volunteer day at Jungle Friends
with the Tallahassee Lassies


March 13, 2010

Jeanne, one of our favorite monkey sponsors and her friends made a trek to Gainesville to do their part for the monkeys. And there was plenty for them to do!


Alternative Spring Breaks/University of Tampa

February 20, 2010

Volunteers from the University of Tampa Alternative Spring Breaks took time out to put in a weekend full of work helping the Jungle Friends monkeys. The student volunteers also enjoyed a yummy vegan meal, provided by A Well-Fed World and prepared by Claude.


Share Your Heart
Florida Week for the Animals


February 14, 2010

A great time was had by all of our valuable volunteers. Participants included a group of students from Jordan Glen school. These kids also did a toy drive for the monkeys, and are dedicated to bettering our world for all species! What a great group! The volunteers also enjoyed a great vegan meal, provided by A Well-Fed World and prepared by Claude.

Watch the video!


Extreme Monk Makeover
Primate Edition

December 14-17, 2009

A great time was had by all when the Alternative Spring Break students from UIC came to Jungle Friends! What a great group! With their help we built a habitat from start to finish in less than a week!

The student volunteers also enjoyed the great vegan meals, sponsored by Jungle Friends and VegFund. The students especially appreciated that the food was vegan after they joined us for 'Movie Night' and watched EARTHLINGS, which was quite an eye opener for most of them.

Watch their reactions


Be Kind to Animals Week

On May 9th, 2009 Jungle Friends celebrated Be Kind to Animals Week with a special volunteer day. Our volunteers and interns completed a monkey habitat and were rewarded by watching the monkeys enjoy their new digs! And of course, when the work was done we enjoyed a yummy vegan meal.

Vegan food provided and prepared by
Claude Leasure of Specialty Fence


World Week for Animals in Laboratories


Jungle Friends had a volunteer event on April 25, 2009 for World Week for Animals in Laboratories to promote humane research which does not harm animals. Our volunteers, interns and staff worked together building habitats and were rewarded with a wonderful vegan feast.

Vegan food provided by Jungle Friends


Special Volunteer Day

On April 4th & 5th, 2009 Jungle Friends hosted 25 members of UF's Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, 4 interns from Big Cat Rescue and the former 'owners' of Marlee the marmoset - all of whom were non-vegetarian! These volunteers assisted us in building new habitats, landscaping, painting buildings, and chopping fresh produce for our monkeys. For lunch both days, we prepared a vegan cookout with beer brats and Italian sausage dogs off the grill, corn on the cob, pasta salad, hearty chili, and fresh fruit salad. To finish it off, dessert was delicious vanilla soy ice cream cones!

Vegan food sponsored by Vegfund


 

EARTHLINGS screening

 

On Saturday March 28th 2009 at 7 pm we had an EARTHLINGS screening at the sanctuary. EARTHLINGS is an award-winning documentary film about the suffering of animals for food, fashion, pets, entertainment and medical research. Considered the most persuasive documentary ever made, EARTHLINGS is nicknamed "the Vegan maker" for its sensitive footage shot at animal shelters, pet stores, puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, the leather and fur trades, sporting events, circuses and research labs. The viewing was followed by a discussion and vegan snacks were served.

Vegan food provided and prepared by
Claude Leasure of Specialty Fence 


Florida Week for Animals

On February 14th 2009 Jungle Friends celebrated Florida Week for the Animals! We held a Special Volunteer Day from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm on Saturday with Veg4Life providing a vegan feast after the work day.

Vegan food provided, prepared and served by Veg4Life 


World Animal Day

On October 6th 2008, we were delighted to welcome our new friends from Florida Voices for Animals to the sanctuary - Animal Activists of Alachua, a University of Florida organization, were also on the scene building habitats, making monkey runways and chopping produce. After the building and chopping was over, we all enjoyed the camaraderie of a delicious vegan feast.

Vegan food provided and prepared by
Claude Leasure of Specialty Fence 


 

Jungle Friends Romance

Goober Meets Fiona
It was love at first sight for Fiona...she knew what she wanted and she wanted Goober!