Wanderers' Rest Humane Association: Build-A-Bear Youth Humane Education Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
The grant money was used to entirely fund the materials that will be used for all participants. Flyers, school mailing and supplies, printing for all custom-designed humane-education flyers, stickers, logo for program, rack cards to go out into the community, coloring sheets for students ages 6-8 and color flyers for ages 8-14, as stipulated in the grant. Also included were printing supplies and paper/card stock to do a direct mailer for all schools in the county.
This grant immensely helped our shelter as it funded our humane-education program and got it from nothing to great now. We were able to set up all handouts and offer a 15% discount to all parents of students who were visited by humane-education services to schools, camps, youth groups and civic groups, in the shelter and on-site in school classrooms.
It has increased exposure and many teachers are already visiting the shelter. Many of our in-shelter tours result in parents returning with their families to adopt. It has helped many pets via people sharing stories on social media and giving the shelter much more exposure. The number of pets it has helped cannot be measured, but the exposure has helped in many ways, such as monetary donations, which have helped some animals with direct animal care such as medicine, and we have collected from many donation drives through our humane-education program -- which would have been nothing if we did not receive this grant as now we have printed media that we needed desperately.
I will be submitting in another report the breakdown of all the funds used as I spent the entire $7,500 on supplies and actually went over by about $78. Will send in a separate report scans of all invoices.
How many pets did this grant help?
Countless: The community has been sent numerous messages through press releases to local newspapers, and we have used social media and creating a direct mailer to all schools within the county. People have come in from shelter tours with youth and adopted. Many animals have been adopted because students have seen a cat, dog, kitten or puppy they wanted and returned with their parents to adopt. It will help many more as we are now able to get a custom shelter coloring book printed designed by myself which includes a 15% adoption discount to all students and their families. This will be an incentive to adopt!
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
The humane-education grant helped one pet in particular who was a cruelty case that went to court. This elderly dog is being adopted by a local animal control officer and is now a shelter mascot brought to schools for visits. At right are photos of his first school visit. We were able to sway the courts into giving our shelter custody of the dog for these purposes. We were also able to help him with medical costs thanks to people’s donations. This case had gone to court and then was rescheduled, but in the meantime the animal control officers told the court that the dog was going to be a shelter mascot and a local ambassador to schools and youth groups!
