Animal-Kind International Grant Program for Africa-Based Animal Welfare Organizations 2019

AKI's Africa-Based Animal Welfare Organization Grant Program-2019

Our Grant Program reaches worthy Africa-based organizations, beyond our 10 Partner Organizations and supports high impact projects aimed at improving the lives of domestic animals. Please read about our 2019 grant recipients below.

Progress Reports from our 2019 Grantees

AKI's Africa-Based Animal Welfare Organization Grantees-2019

For the 2019 grant program, we received 28 applications, 24 of which were eligible to compete in our 2019 grant program. Out of those, we selected 8 proposals. It was REALLY difficult to choose the winners among so many good proposals. These are our 2019 grant recipients:

Animal Welfare Ilha (Mozambique): Grant awarded in Honor of Elisabethe Mae Reinaker, a young animal advocate and future vet (picture below).

With the grant from AKI, Animal Welfare Ilha will spay or neuter about 45 cats and dogs on Ilha de Mozambique, a tiny island only 3 km long by 500 meters wide. In 2013, AWI started the first sterilization and vaccination campaign. At that time, there was a huge number of stray, unvaccinated dogs living on the streets of Ilha de Mozambique, many of them sick, starving, and a lot of them dying. It was dangerous to walk around at night, as they would be on the streets in packs searching for food.

The local population was terrified of dogs. They would be stoned, attacked, and poisoned. If not killed in these ways, the local police randomly went out and shot them.

AWI was formed with the aim of addressing this horrific situation. They now have a permanent vet, have set up a capture-neuter-vaccinate-release (CNVR) program , and have an ongoing vaccination campaign.

AWI is the only animal welfare in the whole of northern Mozambique. There is no other clinic or vet for miles around.

Bam Animal Clinics (Uganda)

Because it's a hilly area with a very poor road network, donkeys are used to transport food, fire wood, and water in Kween district (Kono parish, Binyiny subcounty, Eastern Uganda). Bam Animal Clinics will train 20 donkey owners on how to make sisal sack saddles for donkeys to protect them from ill health due to wounds caused by poor/no harnessing.

Sisal sack saddles are easy to make, they're durable, and are very effective at cushioning the back of the donkey, as well as the base of the tail, from abrasions and cuts. A total of 100 saddles will be made to benefit 100 donkeys in the community. Bam Animal clinics will use the grant from AKI to purchase:

Sisal sacks
Wooden Sewing needles
Knives
Dry thatching grass
Nylon sewing thread

Bam will also have a radio talk show to discuss welfare concerns of working donkeys, importance of proper harnessing, and the sisal sack saddle training.

The 20 donkey owners who will be trained will act as future trainers in their communities on how to make sisal sack saddles. The trainees will be donkey owners with more than 5 donkeys. These are business people who rent out their donkeys to other community members. The trainees will be required to agree that before hiring a donkey, they will train their customers on proper harnessing.

Bam will also train community leaders who own and rent out donkeys. These are influential people who will be champions in training other community members. These leaders routinely hold community meetings where they discuss and sometimes also train the community about important skills or topics. Making sisal sack saddles and proper harnessing will be included in these regular meetings.

Lastly, Bam will train donkey owners who work at food markets. These are very important people in the community and are organized into groups with a distinctive leadership. Bam will work with them to monitor the use of these saddles and also to continue training others on how to make sisal sack saddles. At the food markets, they can also sell these saddles to donkey owners who would like already made saddles. (Pictures below: with the AKI grant, Bam will purchase sisal sacks and wooden needles, among other items)

Sibanye Animal Welfare and Conservancy Trust (Zimbabwe)

Sibanye will use the AKI grant to hold mobile clinics for donkeys, cats, and dogs and to educate community members about providing for their animals. For us, what stood out about this project is that Alfred (Director, Sibanye Trust) said that when they call meetings to talk about dogs, cats, and donkeys, community members don't attend the meetings since most people don't consider the welfare of animals of concern to them. So instead, Sibanye Trust will participate in monthly community meetings, where Sibanye volunteers will notify community members of the locations and dates of the clinics and the benefits of caring for their animals. They will also engage Village Heads to discuss with villagers the importance of animal welfare, especially for dogs, cats, and donkeys. Target locations for the mobile clinics will be communities that share boundaries with national parks since dogs with rabies or distemper present a risk to wildlife.

Sibanye will hold one mobile clinic/month for three months. They will give rabies and distemper vaccinations, treat wounds and infections, and provide other care, as needed. Currently there is no doctor at the local veterinary department, so Sibanye negotiated with a veterinary doctor from Lupane State University, the local university, to help conduct the clinics.

On top of this, before each mobile clinic, Sibanye will hold education lessons in schools, reaching 500-650 children between the ages of 8 and 16 years old (primary and secondary schools). Lessons will focus on the welfare of dogs, cats, and donkeys. Sibanye will be the first organization in the district to promote the welfare of these animals. (Photos of Sibanye Trust below: Alfred, Director; Atumisoe Leeroy, Volunteer; Ashley Nomakhosi, Student Intern; Linda Ncube, Programmes & Finance; and Vusumuzi Gwebu, Education and Community Liaison Officer)

Giving is Living (South Africa)

AKI's grant to Giving is Living will support Movement for Mutts, a Giving is Living initiative to unchain dogs in townships/rural settlements around Cape Town. The grant will be used to pay for the supplies to erect 10 fences over a 6-month period.

The reasons that dogs are kept on chains vary. Many of the homes in townships don't have fences, so owners use chains to keep their dogs from running away. But also, many of the troubled teens find pleasure in abusing dogs, so owners keep their dogs on short chains, close to their property as a way to protect their dogs. The law states that it is only illegal if the dog is on a chain less than 1 metre long.

Giving is Living will identify dogs in need of shelter and unchaining; try to convince owners to put up a runner or a fence at their own cost (most of them live in extreme poverty and can barely afford food, so most will not be able to do this on their own); assess the environment and find a suitable and most cost-effective way to put up a fence (sometimes a full perimeter fence is required and sometimes only a small portion of the yard/area will need to be blocked off); purchase the necessary materials to build the fence; set a date and gather a group of volunteers to put up the fence; place a tag/badge on the fence to show who sponsored it; coordinate with the animal welfare authorities in charge of that specific township to check on the dogs regularly to ensure the fence is in-tact and that the dogs are being looked after.

Egyptian Society of Animal Friends: The Ahmed el-Sherbiny Memorial Grant

This grant was awarded in memory of Ahmed el-Sherbiny, who, with his British-born wife Jackie, led the Egyptian Society of Animal Friends, the Egyptian Federation for Animal Welfare, and the Middle East Network for Animal Welfare. Ahmed passed away on March 7, 2019 (see his memorial on AKI's Memory Wall).

With the grant from AKI, ESAF will trap-neuter-vaccinate-release 75 dogs from the Sheikh Zayed compound, a huge, residential neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt. This will continue ESAF's TNVR of dogs, started in November 2018, when Ahmed Sherbiny drafted a proposal to the trustees of Sheikh Zayed in reply to their request to humanely assist with the street dogs living in the neighborhood. ESAF estimated 750 dogs were living in the compound at that time. ESAF began to trap and neuter the dogs in December 2018 and completed nearly 550 TNVRs to date – approximately 75 dogs per month. But due to the lack of funds, ESAF had to cut back on the number of sterilizations, which threatened this highly visible effort.

This project is the first time that officials have signed an MOU like this and ESAF hopes that other compounds will follow suit-- but this can only happen if they demonstrate success. ESAF has received requests from other neighborhood organizations, such as New Cairo, to do TNVR. It's critical to demonstrate that TNR can work in Cairo and that ESAF can be a reliable partner in that effort. Thanks to the grant from AKI, ESAF is confident they can show this.

Save Animals-Democratic Republic of Congo (one of two 2018 grantees to receive a 2019 grant)

Save Animals-DRC will use the AKI grant to fund a range of activities as part of their campaign against the consumption of dogs and cats in the DRC:

They will launch a TV show, Save Animals Universe, which will highlight SA's activities to promote pet ownership (and not raising cats and dogs for food). The grant will pay for the first three months of the show. SA has identified sponsors for the TV show, who are interested in covering the costs once SA can demonstrate that they can raise money and launch the show.
SA will make accessories for dogs and cats, such as beds made out of tires and scratching posts for cats. They will sell these to people to promote pet ownership and also to provide SA with a source of revenue for their future activities.
The grant will fund one "Sanitation Day." SA volunteers choose a location every month where they volunteer and do tasks such as cleaning cages and bathing animals (locations might be the zoo, livestock farms, or breeders-while they don't condone breeding, they try to improve the conditions where the breeding animals live). The grant will cover the purchase of supplies for Sanitation Day in October. The location will be chosen so that it can be used as part of SA's pet promotion campaign.
In November, SA will hold a 2-day workshop where veterinarians and trainers will give advice to dog and cat owners.
SA will raise awareness of dogs and cats as pets and of good care of animals in 10 schools.

SA explained the goal of this wide ranging project: The overall goal is to reach more people in different ways. We wanted to use methods that will impress people and awaken their sense of love for animals. Yes the activities may seem scattered, but if you look at the bottomline, they all converge to a single point. We have avoided conventional methods that do not have a wow effect and people remain unresponsive to these old methods. We believe the impact will be enormous - 90% of the population has a television in Kinshasa. Just choose the right TV channel and a good broadcast time and people will watch and learn new ideas about cats and dogs. Below pictures: SA-DRC members with the Provincial Minister of the Environment (red tie); SA-DRC holds a "Sanitation Day"; SA-DRC will make cat toys and dog beds to sell and raise money for the group and to promote pet ownership.

OIPA Cameroon (one of two 2018 grantees to receive a 2019 grant)

In 2018, OIPA Cameroon was a grant recipient of an AKI Africa-Based Animal Welfare Grant. The funds received were meant to support animal care clinics that would treat 50 dogs and cats and educate dog and cat owners about animal care and welfare. Before the campaign, OIPA Cameroon held a massive sensitization exercise in the community of Chomba. And then, unexpectedly, on the day of the campaign, 162 dogs and cats and their owners showed up! As planned and budgeted for, OIPA Cameroon gave rabies vaccines to 50 animals and they provided preventive treatments and other basic care to the 112 animals. It was a regrettable that they were unable to treat all 162 animals. Most of the animal owners wished to see their animals happy and healthy. In the course of the year, since that campaign, OIPA Cameroon has given rabies vaccinations to 14 more dogs.

This AKI grant means that OIPA Cameroon can revisit the Chomba community and hold another vet clinic in this community where people are anxious to provide good care for their pets. The grant will cover purchase of rabies vaccines, tick and flea preventatives, de-worming meds, syringes and needles, vaccination certificates, transport for volunteers, production of educational materials, and refreshments for the volunteers over the 5-day campaign. Rabies vaccinations will be given to 100 animals. Owned and homeless dogs and cats will be treated, the entire community will become healthier for people and animals, and community members will be more accepting of the dogs and cats who live among them.

The event will the take place at the Chomba market square in September 2019. The education campaign will continue through September and will reach all 7 primary schools in the community.

Nyendwa Mobile Veterinary Clinic (Zambia)

This proposal moved us because it is the 1st of its kind in the remote Muswishi villages in Chisamba district, Chief Chamuka. With the AKI grant, Nyendwa Mobile Veterinary Clinic will vaccinate and de-worm 500 dogs and cats for the first time in their lives and treat other diseases and wounds. They will also educate adults (these are mainly farmers) and school children in the rural communities in basic animal welfare, animal health, and protection. Vaccinations in this rural area will prevent the spread of rabies to dogs, cats, wildlife, and people.

There have been so many dog bite cases and some deaths in these communities. Children are usually the victims since they are the ones who play with unvaccinated cats and dogs.

Nyendwa will first meet with the government Veterinary Department, Traditional Leaders, and the communities to get their buy-in. Based on their experience in this area, Nyendwa is planning to rescue some dogs and cats that are particularly at risk, roaming the villages with no proper place to live. Because of the ongoing drought, the situation for cats and dogs is getting worse by the day-dogs and cats can go for days without food and water, and there are more and more strays. (Nyendwa hopes to follow this up with spay/neuter).

With the AKI grant, the mobile clinic will visit each catchment area once every month for 6 months. In case of an emergency, Nyendwa has trained a group of community livestock volunteers who are stationed in these areas and they move around on a regular basis to treat and attend to any problem under the supervision of a government veterinary officer. These community livestock volunteers are an integral part of the communities and will be available for any emergency or routine requirements when the Nyendwa Mobile Veterinary Clinic is not in the area.