 |
| ©kids.nationalgeographic.com |
A Grand Junction-based nonprofit that for 13 years has partnered with a rural El Salvadoran community on education and cultural exchange programs announced this week its latest undertaking: to launch a spay and neuter campaign aimed at improving cat and dog health.
Sponsored Links
Anna Stout, president of the Foundation for Cultural Exchange, hopes that the campaign, which will be conducted in May 2018 in El Espino, El Salvador, will accomplish a raft of goals: improving local animal and human health, reduce trauma and encourage compassion in one of Central America’s most dangerous countries, and, eventually, transform local veterinarians into experts in a region that often lacks spay and neuter protocols.
“What’s amazing about this whole spay and neuter campaign is that on its surface it looks like it’s about animals, but it’s about so much more than animals,” Stout said, speaking Saturday at her organization’s 13th anniversary celebration at the Art Center.
Sponsored Links
Stout’s foundation, which has long focused on cultural exchange programs and partnering Grand Junction sponsors with El Espino students, is seeking to raise about $10,000 to pay for spay and neuter materials, vaccines and to ensure qualified veterinarians can attend the weeklong event next year.
“There has never been a campaign like this put on in El Salvador, ever,” Stout said. “This is something that will put El Espino on the map. … We’re expecting it to attract veterinarians, nonprofits, humanitarian groups … from all over the country and all over the region to learn how to do these things.”
Animal overpopulation has a direct impact on human health, especially in communities like El Espino, where residents use natural water sources that are easily impacted by animal waste and where animal-carried disease can quickly spread, Stout said.
“By spaying and neutering animals, and helping get population under control, we’re reducing the number of those potential carriers,” she said.
On a larger scale, Stout said improving spaying and neutering can improve animal health and lengthen their lives, as well as encourage more compassion toward pets.
Sponsored Links
“This is the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere, and there’s no secrets about that,” she said. “If you can do one thing that helps to reduce some of that trauma, it’s not something that’s especially measurable, but it is something that we believe will help reduce the overall collective trauma in the community.”
Stout, who founded the Foundation for Cultural Exchange 13 years ago when she was 19 years old, said fundraising is a challenge in running a Grand Junction-based nonprofit that does its work abroad.
“It makes fundraising tricky, and we really have to depend on our community here,” she said. “We’ve been really fortunate though because Grand Junction has always stepped up to the plate and we’ve been able to fund all these scholarships by connecting each student to sponsors.”
Anyone interested in contributing to the spay and neuter campaign or learning more about it can visit the foundation’s fundraising site on YouCaring.com and searching El Salvador Spay/Neuter Campaign.
Author:Gabrielle Porter
