Monday, February 15, 2010

NWAAR Volunteer Opportunities

This is an excerpt from our volunteer coordinator Elaine. Please contact her at elainetayrien@gmail.com if you are interested in any of these opportunities. No matter how much or how little you do, it means a lot especially to our animals!

PetCo cage cleaners! I need people to help clean cages at PetCo during the week. I need Wednesday, Thursday & Friday covered and a few folks willing to be called in a pinch if someone can't show. This commitment is only about an hour or so a day in the mornings before 11:00 a.m. Cleaning cages, feeding & watering cats and giving them a little TLC. Training is involved and the knowledge that you are making those cats lives a little better until they find their forever home!
Spay & Neuter Clinics! We also will be needing some folks that are interested in working at spay & neuter clinics. We host a monthly low cost spay & neuter clinic and are wanting to consider doing a Mass Spay Day this spring or early summer. I need to find people who are willing to learn what needs to be done and maybe even run part of the event! So please let me know if you are interested in helping at spay neuter clinics so we can start to get you trained for when we have our mobile spay & neuter unit or other bigger events! This is great experience for those interested in getting into the veterinary field!
Foster Homes! We are in need of some folks who are willing to foster some cats. These are cats that are already in our system. Some are special needs cats and need long term foster homes. The special needs cats have issues that range from old age, to poor eyesight or hearing to illness such as FIV or Feline Leukemia. These animals are traditionally very hard to adopt and will need long term foster homes until a forever home is found that is willing to take on these issues. We only have a handful of these cats but they are in desperate need of a better environment to help them either become or stay healthy and live out their lives. Vet expenses are covered by NWAAR through our participating vets, food and other basic care items will need to be covered by the foster home. Your home will need to be subject to approval for fostering. We do have a few dogs that are also already in our system that need fostered also. You must have a fenced in back yard for dogs and be willing to socialize them until they are either adopted or accepted into the transport program.
Youth Group! I am interested in starting a Youth group this summer. This group would only meet over the spring & summer months. The purpose of this group would be to attend activities and events and help out where needed and create simple and fun fundraisers that help create an "Angel Fund" to help provide care for feral animals that come through our system that require spaying & neutering, rabies shots and other health issues that affect this community of often neglected animals and to reduce their overpopulation. Please contact me if you are interested in participating or running this program - spring is right around the corner and we need to get started! We already have a handful of youths who help out at Adoption Drives & Clinics and I would love to be able to have this done in a much more organized manner so the kids can have more of a voice in our organization and show their ideas and energy in the community!
Fund-raising! We have several events and fundraisers that we need support from a group of persons who like to contact groups, vendors and others in our area for donations. These donations can be "in kind" or donations of services or items that can be used to help raise funds or financial donations that can be used towards the events that help raise funds or medical care of animals or the Mobile Spay & Neuter Unit we would like to someday have. We are currently trying to raise these types of funds for our Annual Poker Tournament on April 17th and have several events planned over the spring and summer that will need varied amounts and types of funding.
Events! We have many events planned over the summer that we will need people to attend. If you like interacting with the community and are willing to help show what our organization is all about then this is the volunteer opportunity for you!. Most events are weekends and we set them up in shifts so you can enjoy the event also! Depending on your shift, you will need to be willing to collect our event box, and set up items, set up the booth, take it down at the end of the event and return it when you are done! We also try to do some sort of fund-raising at each event.
Our first finalized event of this year is the Annual Poker Tournament on April 17th. This is a fun event that you can also participate in! We need help actually running the event and most of all recruiting and collecting prizes for the players. If you want to play in the game - you can! Just purchase a ticket! The success of the event is really dependent on the prizes we get - last years grand prize was a 32 inch Big Screen TV! We had electronics, trips and many other great prizes! Soooo - if you are that person who likes to make contacts with in the community and ask for great prizes - just let me know and we will get you started!

No comments: