Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I am a big fan of blogs highlighting interesting unknown charities. Strengthen the Good is an interesting site that does this. You will also know that I am a big supporter of The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the efforts to help those with spinal cord injuries.

Today, while surfing BlogExplosion, I found another very interesting site. Monkeyverb is a blog with a tag line, “Because Monkeys Are Funny...and They Do Stuff!”. They had a pointer to Helping Hands Monkeys. “Helping Hands is an organization that trains Capuchin monkeys to assist quadriplegics with simple every-day tasks.”

The skeptic in my wondered if this is real. So, I checked, GuideStar. For those of you that don’t know GuideStar, it is a site where you can look up details about various not for profit organizations. Not for profits are require to file a 990 form with the IRS, and they are public information. GuideStar makes this information available online. (As an aside, they are another group worth contributing to).

So, I checked GuideStar on Helping Hands. They write, “The Organization is a non-profit human services organization that trains capuchin monkeys to assist severely disabled individuals with their daily activities The Organization offers an educational program for schools, camps and youth organizations that teach children about spinal cord injury prevention, disability awareness and the human animal bond.”

They have been around since 1983. In 2002, they received 1.2 million dollars in donations. They are a cool group that I encourage people to check out.