For more than four decades, the mission of Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers—and later Envisioning Access—has been to increase independence, opportunity, and dignity for people living with physical disabilities. We started by creating lifetime partnerships between highly trained capuchin monkeys and their human partners – relationships that created mutually enriched lives both physically and emotionally. Our permanent commitment to the highest level of care for those original monkeys and their human partners has never waivered.

In recent years we have started exploring new ways that we could extend our mission into a future that is rapidly developing technologies that provide different opportunities for people living with disabilities. We have deepened our understanding of the intangible benefits of the very long-term supportive human-monkey relationships we sustain, while learning much about promising technological tools being developed for the future. That work has sharpened our understanding of the key elements that have characterized, and will continue to characterize, assistance that increases inclusion for all in our increasingly complex world.