Community Outreach
Festivals, Parades, Farmers Markets, Concert, Baseball Games, and More Outreach projects
Most every weekend we are not working at a trailer park or other low-income or rural community project, we are set up at a festival, parade, football game, baseball game, farmers market, concert, or other similar gathering with our big green Spay/Neuter Coalition banner and lots of resource flyers.
We give out flyers and answer lots of questions. We meet countless pet owners or friends and families of pet owners who need help financing a spay or neuter (or several of them!) We are able to direct them to a clinic or program for the circumstances they explain.
We often recruit volunteers who are kind enough to help us man our table and keep the answers coming to those who need us. We touch the lives of so many pets and their owners, and often we change their view completely. For us, these are very gratifying days (although often long days!) These are a few pictures from some of our past events like this.
Although it's hard to quantify the kind of work we are doing at Spay/Neuter Coalition, we're going to give it a shot.
We can't estimate the hundreds, if not thousands, of resource flyers we've handed out and questions we've answered at all of the outreach events we've manned this year, or the emails we've responded to, etc.
However, we can give the numbers of spay/neuter surgeries for which we were definitely responsible. In 2011 (our first year!), between referrals, hosted low-cost spay/neuter clinics, obtaining sponsorships for surgeries, transportation, and guidance, we are proud to say we have been able to get in to spay/neuter surgery over 750 kittens, cats, puppies, and dogs. We are saving hundreds and hundreds of pets' lives through the prevention of unwanted litters.
Thanks to all of you who help make our rewarding work possible.
Whispering Pines Outreach Project
In the summer and fall of 2011, we initiated a community outreach mission in Whispering Pines trailer park in Canton, Georgia.
The residents there were in desperate need of spay/neuter assistance and education/guidance. We provided financial help and/or resources to the residents so they could get their pets spayed and neutered. We also provided transportation for many who needed help getting their animals to/from the clinics.
During this 60-lot trailer park project, 111 pets received spay/neuter surgeries, as well as their basic vaccinations and deworming. Considering an unaltered cat or dog can be responsible for approximately 67,000 offspring in a six-year time period, that's a pretty amazing "111 pets" number. Those pets could easily have caused about 134,000 to 200,000 unwanted pets.
While there, we also helped with much-needed flea prevention, donated bowls, blankets, collars, leashes, and dog or cat food.
During this project, we were gratified to receive many thanks from the residents and some purrs and wet kisses from our patients, too.