The Animal Care Division has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the Maddie's Fund "Open Arms" Challenge, a program that encourages animal shelters and rescue organizations to eliminate barriers to pet ownership within their communities by being more inclusive.
The County's program was one of only 10 out of nearly 200 applications acknowledged in the Robust Category for its efforts to actively recruit bilingual volunteers and help keep animals in their homes. The money will be used to fund the free ride home program, free dog houses, and other prevention programs.
"It's important to eliminate potential barriers that are often overlooked by animal shelters," said Emily Wood, Director of the Animal Care Division. "For example, all of our educational materials were originally in English. This creates a major barrier as important information about volunteering and adoption opportunities may not be getting to non-English speaking communities."
Animal Care translated brochures and flyers into Haitian-Creole and Spanish to reach a larger audience of potential adopters and actively recruit bilingual volunteers. It also added unisex signage in its public restrooms.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up