Humane Society of Western Montana: Build-A-Bear Youth Humane Education Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

This August we requested money to use for our Ken Shughart Junior Award winner to help honor and foster a connection with incredible young people in our community who have shown compassion for animals. As our Ken Shughart Award Banquet will happen in April 2018, we have not spent this grant money yet. Please consider this a preliminary report of what the money will be used for.

This grant helps us to connect and honor young people in our community who show compassion toward animals. We focus on the human-animal bond at all ages. Our goal is to raise awareness about our shelter to younger people so that they can be involved in supporting our animals. In April 2018, we will be using this grant to honor our 2018 Ken Shughart Junior Award recipient. Several young people who have shown care for animals will be nominated and considered for this Junior Award. It's a wonderful opportunity to get more young people involved in our shelter to care for our animals!

How many pets did this grant help?

N/A

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

This money is focused on helping young people in our community. Last year, the Ken Shughart Junior Award was given to Kathryn Donovan for her outstanding service to pets in our community. Kathryn is an 11-year-old who owns a business called Kaboba Designs. She hand-makes fun, braided dog toys. Ten percent of all of her sales are donated to the Humane Society of Western Montana. With this award, we have been able to foster a relationship with Kathryn that helps us to keep her connected to our shelter. We sell her toys in our re-Tail store, and she was a featured vendor at our One Stop Shop fundraiser. This year, and in years to come, we plan to continue connecting younger people to our shelter in many ways.