Education: An Increasingly Important Part of Our Mission
Our Mission Statement is very specific. Our goals are:
- To prevent and reduce animal suffering by providing assistance to abused, homeless, injured and sick animals.
- To actively promote and encourage altering of all pets to reduce and prevent overpopulation.
- To find loving, dependable and nurturing forever homes for animals in our care at the shelter and in foster homes.
- To educate the public by teaching and promoting the ethic of compassion and respect for all animals, including the need to be kind and responsible stewards.
Happy, Health Family Pet
Workshops and Classes
Animal Aid hosts a series of seminars and hands-on workshops based around activities that promote the physical and emotional health of pets and their families.
Why are we doing this? We want to work ourselves out of a job! Year after year we deal with the aftermath as too many otherwise fine animals are abandoned for an issue that could have been solved if the owner had timely access to information about other options.
What are the costs involved? We have been extremely lucky in recruiting volunteer specialists to present the classes. Their willingness to donate their time (coupled with the Workshop Coordinator's bulldog determination that there be zero overhead involved with running the classes) allowed us to keep registration fees within the reach of our target audience – low- to middle-income families with pets – and still end up with a small profit to apply toward our programs.
One bonus program We've also chosen to include one free offering each season. In Fall 2007 is was a Dog Safety show for K-5th graders featuring the "Kids on the Block" Powerful Puppetry troupe and a DoveLewis Therapy dog. Our goal for Winter 2009 is to offer a Disaster Preparedness Workshop for families with pets.
CLICK HERE to read more about the workshops and classes. CLICK HERE to download a flyer describing the program and the Fall 2008 schedule.
