ASPCA to help community groups improve animal welfare

NEW YORK—The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is partnering with animal-welfare and community organizations in a nationwide effort to improve the quality of animal treatment and care.

Targeting several communities at a time, ASPCA Mission: Orange will identify the needs of each and implement programs aimed at improving animal care, especially in shelters. Efforts will include financial assistance and grants, strategic planning, community grass-roots activities, humane education and training opportunities, among others.

"In the more than 30 years that I have been involved in animal welfare, I have seen, time and time again, that we as an industry are most effective in saving animals when we put our differences aside and pool our strengths to achieve what is, after all, a shared goal —the elevation and continued welfare of animals in our society," says ASPCA President Ed Sayres in a press release, of partnering with the numerous community shelters, clinics and organizations.

The mission name was chosen to correlate the vibrancy and energy associated with the color orange with efforts to improve animal welfare.

ASPCA Mission: Orange obtained three-year commitments from each of the communities selected as partners in 2007: Austin, Texas; Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss.; Philadelphia; and Tampa, Fla. As progress is made in those cities and they move toward a sustainable model of change, the ASPCA will find new community partners for 2008.

The organization will invest up to $200,000 in each partner city for increased building capacity and other animal-welfare efforts to make each of the cities a "humane community."

The goal is to increase community shelter adoptions by at least 10 percent by the end of 2007 and move toward a 75 percent "save rate" by 2010.

"I am very proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with so many leaders in animal and community welfare today," Sayres says.