See It: The Community being helped

Two summers ago I was able to visit India, my home country, to learn dance from my teacher's Guru and perform at over 7 prestigious events in a two week time period. The trip was amazing except for one fact... witnessing the countless stray animals barely living in the streets. I was heartbroken and did as much as I could when I was there, giving them my food and finding some extra food for their family. However, I couldn't do much more as I was leaving in a month. But I decided that I really wanted to make a difference.

This past school year, I have been contacting various animal welfare organizations in India. I have successfully partnered with one shelter called PAWS. They are very in touch with animal needs and rights. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to work there. I am raising money, hopefully over $10,000 to spay and neuter stray animals in India. This hopefully stop the reproduction of homeless dogs and cats in a humane way. These pets will be spayed and neutered, cared for, and given rabies protection, then released back from where they were picked up. I will also be working at the shelter over the summer to learn and take care of the animals. Over the two week period, I will also visit approximately five schools giving presentations about animal welfare. It is a common social feeling in India to be not care about animals, however with even a few presentations we can change some attitudes of children. I will also be promoting the programs and shelter, hopefully raising some adoption rates.

I am holding a raffle in school and placing collection cans all over my town to raise money for this cause.

See It: The Community being helped

This project is meant to raise money and promote awareness for the Trap-neuter/spay-release programs throughout Illinois and the greater Chicago land area. I have been a long time volunteer at animal shelters and know first hand how much spaying one cat can cost. The more money donated the fewer cats there are running around on the streets. I also hope to educate our children about this cause by speaking publicly for schools, Scout troops, and community organizations.

See It: The Community being helped

For around three years I volunteered for a nonprofit organization called SNAP - Spay Neuter Action Project. We provide low cost spay and neuter for low income individuals who own dogs, cats, and/or rabbits in San Diego County. Our website is http://www.snap-sandiego.org.

Our goal is to end pet over-population and help keep the shelter's number low, rather than over flowing as they currently exist. We began in 2003 by a wonderful woman named Candy Schumann, our Volunteer Executive Director and founder.

We run education workshops for free on proper pet care, pet over-population, and dog bite prevention. These workshops are offered to numerous schools and other organizations (like the girl scouts) around San Diego County.

At the beginning of this year SNAP offered me a paid position, and I am currently an employee, working as a Kennel Assistant on our mobile veterinary bus where we do our spay and neuter surgeries on dogs, cats, and rabbits. My job is to monitor the animals and clean & prepare the dirty surgical instruments for re-sterilization in the autoclave.

Since we began in August of 2003 we have fixed over 15,000 pets in San Diego Counties, and it was recently reported by one of our most severely over populated shelters (Chula Vista Animal Care Facility) that for the first time in years the animal intake numbers have finally began to decrease!!!!

Thanks for looking, and please spay or neuter your pets! Because there just aren't homes for them all.