DogExpress
With all the horrifying acts of animal cruelty such as group of boys burning alive three puppies in Hyderabad, dog thrown from a roof, drunk businessman running a car over a dog etc. in the recent past, city based organizations are planning to launch a stray dog welfare campaign to sensitise people and protect the dogs from the growing apathy and brutality meted out to them by the people. This launchpad will replicate Jamshedpur model, which showed promise as 50% of dogs in Jamshedpur have been vaccinated and sterilized in the last 6 months.
This stray dog welfare initiative will spread awareness towards the situation of stray dogs via workshops in schools, colleges, slum communities, corporate and government offices. It is important to start these workshops in schools as children are the future of the country and they should learn to protect animals and be sensitive about them.
“The Hyderabad incident has left the country shocked. We need to accept the fact that man and animal are supposed to co-exist. My aim is to reach out to a cross section of people in society to create a larger change in human behavior towards dogs for reducing human-dog conflicts,” said Sangitaa Sehgall of The Launchpad.”
Sehgall, who is an education partner of the US based Humane Society International and Animal Help Foundation, India, is currently carrying out a Tata Group funded project in Jamshedpur for awareness and educational activities involving 10,000 schools, slum communities and also involving local authorities.
Sehgall said, “we have already approached the district administration with a proposal and will also start workshops and educational modules in a couple of city schools shortly.”
Stray Dog Welfare Campaign Module
For launching awareness workshops, the modules are categorized into 6 sorts depending on the age group from classes 3 to 12, including two modules designed for adults and householders.
“These are 45 minutes in duration and are structured in an interactive way with a video, story-telling and question-answer session to engage the viewer in an effective way,” said Sehgall.
The content of the module took 4 months to create by her, which contains topics like understanding stray dogs, how to avoid stray dog bites, what is rabies and how to prevent it and responsible pet ownership.
“Families should understand that a dog is not a toy. Unfortunately, today we see many good breed dogs roaming in the streets due to the insensitivity of owners who disown them,” she added.
Volunteers of other NGOs like Moto Paws meet on Sundays at the Beach Road to discuss the progress of their main initiative of radium collaring stray dogs in accident prone areas.
“It is a voluntary service. The only payment we get is the love and gratitude from the dogs and that is the most incredible feeling of satisfaction ever,” said a volunteer.
Source: The Hindu
The goal of this initiative is to make people and young kids realize that every life is sacred and they should be sensitive towards them. Let’s join this initiative and make sure that acts of animal cruelty don’t happen again.
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in Chandigarh, India. 
