Our group, UA-2A, was one of the winners of the Animal Action grant with our idea of an Animal Wel-fair. However, we found it difficult and near impossible to get groomers and vaccination people to come help us. In addition, F.A.I.R., one of the organizations that helps us, is having some economic troubles. We still want to spread awareness about responsible pet ownership and spay and neuter the cat population, and possibly the dog population. We want to change our project a bit by still having an informational thing like in the park where we would distribute information, activites that would teach responsible pet ownership like a giant game board in the park, prizes like dog and cat stuff and information packets for coming, t-shirts, and a movie for dogs. So this is an ongoing project.
Animal Wel-fair
the problem:
Currently at the end of every semester, the Tucson, Arizona community is filled with stray cats and dogs. Many believe this is because students get pets, but realize they can't take care of them due to other obligations. We want to educate the student body and community that having a pet is a life long commitment and there are certain responsibilites that one has when adopting a pet. In addition, we want to help the pet population ,from soaring to the point where the community can't take care of all these animals, by spaying and neutering them.
vital stats:
people impacted:
0people involved:
5why it's important:
Our group, Animal AdvoCATS,are trying to get started in the community by advocating responsible pet ownership, creating social and educational events for pet owners and pet lovers,and helping current abandoned pets be placed with loving and responsible families. We are a new club at the University of Arizona and we are going to raise money to distribute informational to students and hold events that will help the spirit of pets and people on campus.Some of the events we are going to do are a doggie treat bakesale with homemade treats, Woof-n-Walk, in which we would work with Foundation for Animals in Risk(F.A.I.R) and do a dog wash, a day where people can come out and pet puppies and play with dogs from shelters and from F.A.I.R, and a dog blood drive for dogs in need.
the plan of action:
To create the organization we had to go through our school's student government to become a club. In doing this we had to have members and come up with a consitution which includes a policy with freedom from discrimination, no hazing, and compliance with local, state, and federal laws. To create our project we will get discounts from the student government to create fliers, find businesses that will be willing to help, and get the campus involved.
how you can get involved:
Local businesses can advertise through us and maybe receive some admeneties in exchange for their services. By working through small businesses, the club, community, and businesses would prosper. The money would stay in the community, we would spread our message and acheive our goal, and the small businesses would get advertisement and respect from the community for their charitable efforts.
project updates:
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Comments
this sounds awesome! i would definitely encourage you to post updates on how the events go. i feel like animal welfare is sometimes a cause that people don't know exactly how to tackle. hopefully other schools will read this and get inspired to do similar things!!
Are you guys going to find a way to do neutering? Isn;t part of the problem that strays mate like crazy???
thanks, I'll definitely try to keep this updates
That's one of the things we're working on. There's a clinic here that does spaying and neutering for $10 during certain days. We're hoping to get some kind of help from them.
We have had a lot of problems on this project, with people quitting on us. Even though we held officer elections in May, our President and Vice President decided to quit with no warning or explanation and another student hasn’t come to any meeting for this semester. They were responsible for renewing our club membership in May with ASUA but they never did. All semester we have been trying to renew it, but ASUA hasn’t gotten back to us, even when we contact them for updates on our status. Without being a club we can’t advertise on campus or talk to the students formally. This is especially frustrating because they are the audience we are trying to reach. We have also tried to contact local veterinarians to work on this project with us, but none have gotten back to us. We have contacted ABC spay and neuter clinic and they are interested in this project and helping us in the spring. Also, we can continue to walk dogs at the Pima Animal Care Center without being a club with just us remaining four people. Hopefully we will be grated club status and then we could continue to hold hall programs in the dorms about responsible pet ownership, as well as recruit more members and raise awareness on campus.