Trap Neuter Vaccinate and Return in Tanzania
- Animal-Kind International
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
For Tanzania Small Animal Veterinary Organization's 2nd AKI grant project, TASAVO targeted "problem" areas, where, for 6 months, they planned to trap, neuter, vaccinate, and return (TNVR) community cats and dogs.
TASAVO's grant project involved more than TNVR: TASAVO planned to de-worm and provide other vet care for free-roaming cats and dogs, as needed; find homes for community animals who were in unsafe locations; and provide community animal welfare education at markets, universities, colleges, local restaurants, and apartments, from where they would be collecting the free-roaming animals. Normally when TASAVO traps community animals, many people witness the activity and TASAVO always uses that opportunity to deliver animal welfare education.

And there was even more to the TASAVO grant project: They planned to establish an Animal Welfare Club at the University of Dar es Salaam and at Sokoine University of Agriculture.
Another big plus for TASAVO's proposal to AKI is that they are a group of young vets and other related professionals, about 45 members, all of whom volunteer with TASAVO and receive no pay; they do this work because they love what they do, they know how important their work is, and they want to help their local communities-the people and the pets.
No wonder our AKI grant review panel loved TASAVO's proposal and awarded them a 2nd Africa-Based Animal Welfare Organization Grant Project (their 1st was our previous grant- year, 2023 to 2024)!
Just a few of TASAVO's results can be seen in these photos and stories--but there are so many more!----->

One of TASAVO's target areas for TNVR is the University of Dar es Salaam campus. The campus is about 15 kilometers from the TASAVO clinic, and the location was selected because of the high number of free-roaming dogs and cats who mainly hang around the cafeterias and the residence buildings looking for food. TASAVO had previously sterilized and vaccinated about 40 cats from the campus and wished to continue focusing there because of the many unsterilized, free-roaming cats and dogs still remaining there.
During AKI's previous grant to TASAVO, they had begun establishing an Animal Welfare Club on campus to help TASAVO raise awareness about animal welfare and the stray animals who found their safe haven on campus. TASAVO was continuing that effort, as well and the launch of the Club was scheduled for March.
Once our 2024 grant program was well-underway, the AKI Board decided that we would reward a top performing grantee, one that could use additional funds to continue their grant project and continue creating positive impacts. TASAVO was the winner!
We--TASAVO and AKI--hadn't realized how important our additional top-up grant reward would be for TASAVO until in February, when we received this news from Dr. Thomas:
"We had a big challenge this month. An announcement was given out on the university campus about their plans to shoot all roaming dogs and cats. This raised a serious panic from students and staff and we got calls from one of the students, a founding member of the University Animal Welfare Club that is set to be launched in March. We received other calls from staff members requesting our intervention.
After several meetings and discussions with the head of police, the plans for shooting were discontinued, but this wasn't until the second day of the exercise (they had already killed a few cats and dogs). They stopped it on the condition that TASAVO will be responsible to humanely control the increasing population of stray dogs and cats around all the university campuses and surrounding areas.
This nightmare came at the end of the use of grant funds from AKI and we now rely on the additional funds you rewarded us which we will use to fix the big problem we promised to do to stop the shooting.
During this time we conducted several welfare educations at the office of Vice Chancellor to try to get them to accept the humane sustainable method of dealing with this stray problem at the university."
The notices says: "THE UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM AUXILIARY POLICE DEPARTMENT IN COLLABORATION WITH THE MUNICIPALITY OF UBONGO ANNOUNCES TO ALL COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND RESIDENTS OF THE MWL. J.K. NYERERE CAMPUS, MLIMANI THAT THERE WILL BE A CUTTING-OFF EXERCISE FOR ROAMING DOGS AND CATS WHICH WILL BE CARRIED OUT ON 22/02/2025 SATURDAY AND 23/02/2025 SUNDAY. ISSUED BY AP.ASP.ANTHONY S. MSAGHAA ACTING COMMANDER OF AUXILIARY POLICE."
We'll report in our newsletters and future AKI Blog posts on TASAVO's work and their progress implementing humane population management on the Dar es Salaam campus.