Community Engagement

We help people help animals. We make veterinary care affordable and accessible for those living on the margins. We help survivors of domestic abuse find safe places to shelter with their pets. We rehabilitate dogs and prepare them for rewarding careers in conservation detection. We’re proud of what we’re doing together, but what sets us apart is how we do it.

Instead of working for local communities, we prefer to work with them. For example, in Bali we’ve built relationships with local students, local vets, and local government to help control preventable disease in areas prone to natural disaster. Through Programme Dharma, trained locals go door-to-door, talking with their neighbours about rabies vaccination and basic pet care. They organise community clinics and celebrate healthy animals. To date we’ve reached over 8,000 owners, vaccinated 5,500 dogs, and eradicated rabies in 30 communities.

In the far reaches of Northern Canada, 15 hours from the nearest veterinary clinic, packs of stray dogs were being regularly culled. While we believe all animals deserve our guardianship, we don’t believe in imposing our agenda. Instead, we work to build trust.

In Canada, we spent decades earning the trust of First Nations communities. Our Northern Dogs team worked side-by-side with First Nations peoples to change the narrative. Now, if you visit any number of these communities, you’ll find well-cared for dogs, dog houses engineered for cold weather and people and dogs thriving together.

Wherever people are divided, animals can be a powerful force for healing. In Lopare, Bosnia, we partnered with the United Nations to solve a public-safety problem: abandoned, aggressive, free-roaming dogs. Bringing together local residents, teachers, veterinarians, farmers, pet owners, police officers—people who hadn’t spoken to each other since the Bosnian War—we facilitated a series of constituency meetings where people could safely let down their guard, share their perspectives and find ways to work together.

The results included a refurbished veterinary clinic, animal-handling training for firefighters and school curricula updated to address animal welfare. The community was also happier, stronger and safer as a result of our work together. As part of our Clinton Global Initiative commitment, we replicated this community-building programme in six communities in Bosnia. It was so successful that the United Nations Development Programme has taken it upon itself to fund and promote our model in six more communities.