Saving Grace Pet Adoption Center: REDI Training Grant Report

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

This grant helped six team members from our organization gain a new perspective on working with the BIPOC community. It helped to open our eyes to new ways of thinking and gave us actionable items that we can implement in our own shelter and our personal lives as well to help make everyone feel welcome. It will ultimately help us break down barriers and gain new adopters so that more pets can go home faster.

How many pets did this grant help?

100

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

Recently we had a family whose first language was Spanish come to the shelter to adopt. Normally our team would have hobbled along, trying to explain the adoption as best we could and helping them fill out our adoption contract in English.

One of the people who participated in the REDI training decided it would be better to utilize Google Translate and to quickly convert our adoption application to Spanish so that they could fill it out in their first language.

They adopted a dog named Sitka (first photo) and they renamed him Dante. They already brought him by the shelter to say hello and let us know how much they love him.

Another dog who benefitted from the removal of an adoption barrier was Ulrich (second photo). He was a very large German shepherd with a good amount of energy. There was a couple that came in wanting to see him specifically. The only hesitation for us was that they lived in an apartment. But we didn’t let that be a barrier for him and adopted him out. As far as we know, he is doing great and they love him very much.

As we continue to review our programs and protocols we will continue to break down barriers to adoptions and help get specific pets into new BIPOC homes.