Animal welfare is a broad term that essentially means the well-being of animals. Animal volunteering abroad is great for individuals interested in veterinary medicine, zoology, or even for those with just a deep love for animals. Animal welfare programs overseas can vary greatly, but many programs are centered on preventing or minimizing illegal wildlife trade or habitat destruction due to environmental degradation.

Animal welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment that an animal receives is covered by other terms such as animal care, animal husbandry, and humane treatment. Protecting an animal’s welfare means providing for its physical and mental needs. Ensuring animal welfare is a human responsibility that includes consideration for all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.

Also animals on factory farms are a very big issue in this world:

• They’re often given so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.
• Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms’ widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.
• Most factory-farmed animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger or to produce more milk or eggs than they naturally would. Some chickens grow so unnaturally large that their legs cannot support their outsized bodies, and they suffer from starvation or dehydration when they can’t walk to reach food and water.

Every day in countries around the world, animals are fighting for their lives. They are enslaved, beaten, and kept in chains to make them perform for humans’ “entertainment”; they are mutilated and confined to tiny cages so that people can kill them and eat them; they are burned, blinded, poisoned, and cut up alive in the name of “science”; they are electrocuted, strangled, and skinned alive so that people can parade around in their coats; and worse. As a society we have forgotten that we are not the only specie in this world and we have gone too far.

While many natural disasters cause great financial hardship and can tragically result in loss of human life, animals are often forgotten in the chaos. Even though wildlife has adapted to extreme situations to some extent, they can often be victims of injury or desperately lacking food and shelter as a result of the disaster. Domesticated animals, dependent on human caretakers for survival, are often left to perish.

According to the animal right legislation animal welfare assessments must take four questions into account:

• Are the animals properly fed?
• Are the animals properly housed?
• Are the animals healthy?
• Does the behaviour of the animals reflect optimised emotional states? This last question may be the most innovative and controversial aspect. Simply put, it refers to the fact that animals should not experience fear, pain, frustration or any other negative emotional state, at least in a chronic or very intense way.

What more can we do to manage animal shelter support program?

1. It is important to remember that shelters themselves cannot solve the homeless animals problem for us. With your support it will be possible to make a worldwide research about this problem worldwide, including the experts views and opinions on this topic and with the research to propose real suggestions with the list of activities how to change this issue. Our purpose in long term is to gather together activists, volunteers and organizations who wants to fight for animals and their lives, to work with the same principles and acitivities.
2. Our long term aim also is to create programs that prevent animals from becoming homeless – identification and microchipping programs, low cost spay/neuter, pet parenting classes and animal behavior help. We are the ones who must make the commitment, and take the actions, to ensure that we never cause an animal to be in an animal shelter. We must understand: as soon as we stop filling animal shelters with homeless animals, the killing can stop. We also strive to inform and educate the public of the importance of spaying and neutering animals, proper medical care, heartworm prevention and the socialization and training of their pet(s).
3. Your donation will be used for research, publications, campaigns, programs, educational program, materials and many more actions to promote support to animal shelters. We want to love and socialize these animals to ensure the success of their future adoption and to place them in a permanent, loving home.

Thank you for understanding and your wish to support Animal Welfare movement!