Lynchburg Humane Society: Build-A-Bear Youth Humane Education Grant Report

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

$220 was used to purchase a new laptop for volunteer coordinator office
$7,280 is being used for salary for Volunteer Coordinator/Camp Director

This grant allowed us to implement a position within our organization specifically dealing with youth programs. Our new Camp Manager will be able to provide evening, weekend, winter, and summer camps for elementary- and middle-school-aged children interested in working with animals. This also allows us to offer more field-trip opportunities to local schools and provide a wider range of education during those outings. Providing education to our younger community members provides animal-welfare knowledge and community-service skills. We see many of our camp and field-trip attendees become junior volunteers with their parents.

How many pets did this grant help?

Immeasurable

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

Two of our camp counselors have become fosters since becoming involved in our youth-education programs. Jasmine and her mother have fostered five kittens since August, two of whom, Cafrey and Cragen (first two photos), have been released from foster care and adopted. Our new manager has opened a dialogue with local colleges to allow fostering to count for required community-service hours. This has opened up a whole new subsection of fosters. Zoe is one of our most prolific student fosters, having taken in seven foster kittens since Sept. 13, 2016. She adopted the first two kittens she welcomed into her home, Marin and Lynn (third and fourth photos).