Jane Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977 to support her research at Gombe to protect chimpanzees and to promote conservation worldwide. The organization has since expanded its work to include community-centered conservation and youth programs like Roots & Shoots. According to the Jane Goodall Institute, Roots & Shoots has educated hundreds of thousands of young people in over 100 countries, creating a new generation of conservation leaders. Goodall’s 60 years of research in Gombe, revealed that chimpanzees exhibit complex behaviors, personalities, and emotions, redefining the boundary between humans and chimpanzees.
One of Jane Goodall’s latest media appearances was an interview for the Netflix documentary series Famous Last Words, recorded in March before her death on October 1st of this year. and released posthumously. In the documentary Jane Goodall said,”‘I was somebody sent to this world to try to give people hope in dark times. Because without hope, we fall into apathy and do nothing. And in the dark times that we are living in now, if people don’t have hope, we’re doomed. And how can we bring little children into this dark world we’ve created and let them be surrounded by people who’ve given up’”.