JANE GOODALL / THE INSPIRATION SERIES
A closer look.
A wider circle
of care.
On observation, shared knowledge,
and the people who carry the work forward.
By Rob Urban
Attention changes a relationship.
Something first seen as part of the background begins to have a shape of its own. Repeated observation reveals a habit, a preference, a relationship. The world becomes harder to dismiss because it has become more particular.
That is the quality I most admire in Jane Goodall’s work. Her curiosity invited people to look closely at other lives, then to consider what their own lives might contribute.
The invitation grew far beyond the field notebook. It reached researchers building a long record of animal behavior, communities making decisions about their surroundings, and young people deciding that a local problem deserved their effort.
Following those connections makes her legacy feel both substantial and welcoming. There are many ways to participate in caring for a living world.
OBSERVE
A life becomes
more particular.
In a 2015 interview about her early work at Gombe, Goodall recalled watching David Greybeard and Goliath use stems to obtain termites. They sometimes selected leafy twigs and removed the leaves before using them.
The preparation mattered: the chimpanzees were modifying an object for a purpose.
She also remembered how much it meant to follow infants and the relationships between mothers and offspring over time.
Those two interests belong together. A striking discovery may change a scientific conversation, while sustained observation makes the lives involved increasingly complex.
I admire the patience implied by that second kind of knowledge. An individual becomes recognizable across days and years. A relationship has a history.
Her account also includes her mother’s encouragement during the difficult early months. Even a story often remembered as solitary discovery contains someone helping the observer keep going.
CONTINUE
Someone adds
the next observation.
The Institute’s 2025 collection of researchers’ recollections makes the continuing work at Gombe vividly human.
Deus Mjungu describes arriving as a research assistant in 2002, pursuing further study, and later directing the research center. Sims Patton recalls collecting a first datasheet with field assistant Baraka Daniel and the excitement of becoming part of the record.
That datasheet is a beautiful point of entry. It is one small contribution to an undertaking whose value grows through continuity.
A long study depends on people being there, making observations carefully, and leaving information that someone else can use. The time involved is part of its substance.
Goodall’s legacy is especially moving when these names come forward. The work has become a place where other people build knowledge and careers. They bring their own questions to a record that earlier observers made possible.
LISTEN
The people who live
with the landscape.
The Institute dates the beginning of TACARE to 1994, in twelve villages around Gombe. Tanzanian staff with expertise in agriculture, forestry, water management and health worked with village leaders.
The approach connects the wellbeing of people with the future of the surrounding habitat. It begins with engagement and listening, including attention to local knowledge and priorities.
One detail in the Institute’s description deserves particular notice: a community may choose to step back from participation, with the possibility of returning later.
That makes local ownership concrete. People have choices within the relationship.
I appreciate the humility in that structure. Caring about a landscape requires interest in the lives already unfolding there, including needs that may be less visible to a visitor.
It gives conservation a more complete human setting. Knowledge of the forest and knowledge of daily life must be able to inform one another.
BEGIN
Twelve students.
A real conversation.
The Institute’s account of Roots & Shoots begins with twelve high school students meeting Goodall in Dar es Salaam on February 19, 1991.
They discussed problems in their community and what they could do about them. That conversation became the beginning of the program.
I find the setting as meaningful as the later scale. The students arrived with concerns. They were taken seriously enough to be asked what action might follow.
There is respect in giving a young person that kind of responsibility. A concern can become a question to investigate, a project to plan, and a reason to work with others.
The original group belongs in the story of what followed. Their questions helped create a form of participation that other young people could make their own.
Hope, in this account, has people sitting together and deciding where to begin.
MAKE IT YOUR OWN
Care takes
a local shape.
One project highlighted by the Institute makes that invitation unusually tangible.
Baltimore student Naomi B. and her friends created the Embold Project after seeing challenges girls faced around their natural hair. A Roots & Shoots grant helped them obtain materials for workshops, including styling tools, products and curly-haired dolls.
The Institute reports that the workshops reached more than a hundred girls. Participants practiced hairstyles and received hair-care kits.
This is a lovely example of young people recognizing something they wished had been available to them, then making it available to someone else.
The details matter: a doll on which to practice, supplies to take home, a setting in which a child can feel welcome.
A broad commitment to care becomes a very particular experience. Naomi and her friends supplied the local understanding and imagination that gave the project its form.
What stays with me is the movement from noticing to relationship.
A chimpanzee’s action becomes worth watching carefully. A neighbor’s knowledge becomes worth hearing. A young person’s concern becomes worth supporting.
Goodall helped many people feel that attention could lead somewhere. The next step might be research, a local decision, a conversation or a small project with friends.
That is a generous legacy because it leaves room for other people’s intelligence. It continues through the people who observe, question, teach and act in places she could never have reached alone.
I admire the enlargement of care that makes possible. The world becomes more specific, and our relationship to it becomes more alive.
Sources: Jane Goodall’s 2015 Gombe interview; the Institute’s 2025 Voices of Gombe collection; its TACARE history; its account of the 1991 Roots & Shoots founding; and its Embold Project report. Linked throughout. Program outcomes are attributed to the Institute. Interpretation by Rob Urban.