Domestic Animal Cruelty #3

Hello everyone, I’m Jiwon Choi and for my You and the World Project, I chose domestic animal abuse. If you do not know what the You and the World Project is about, click here to get a basic information about what this project is about and for. After I wrote my second blog post of why animal cruelty should be put an action to, I started my agent of change part of the project. The agent of change is when individual go out into the world and make a change for their issue. For example, they can present to others about their issues or volunteer somewhere to help make a difference for their issue. For my agent of change, I volunteered at Operation Ava. Operation Ava is a no-kill animal shelter located at 3rd and Poplar in Philadelphia. At the animal shelter, I volunteered for about 45 hours from March 25th to April 30th.

   The first time I researched what animal shelter I was going to volunteer at, I had some difficulties because had to be at least 16-18 years old. Then, I came across the Pennsylvania SPCA and I received an email telling me to attend the orientation. I started to take classes on the basics I had to learn, but they told me that it was a mistake that they made for sending me the email. I had to find a different place to volunteer, and I came across Operation Ava. When I first went to Operation Ava to volunteer, I had some problems with taking the dogs out from the kettle because some were very nervous and shy, while others were very hyper. The staff and the experienced volunteers there were very kind and helped me whenever I needed any help. As I learned how to handle the dogs as time went on, I didn’t have any problems dealing with them. At Operation Ava, I walked dogs and played with them in the backyard.

    This project has impacted me in so many ways. I realized that there are a lot of domestic animals that were neglected a lot more than I imagined; I was sort of shocked when I saw all the dogs in SPCA and Operation Ava had. Also, I was sad when I saw some of the dogs shivering whenever I walked by their kettle. I knew that they were afraid of me, of what I will do to them, of how I will treat them. In the other hand, I noticed that most of the dogs were very energetic. It made me believe that if you give them love, if you show them love, they will actually trust you and like you, even if they were hurt by someone in the past. By noticing this and by knowing that this is why I am volunteering, I felt accomplished because this was a way that I was helping the animals. Even though this project impacted me a lot, I believe that this also impacted the community because I think that if more and more people are aware of how many animals are neglected and abused, they would help adopt animals and give the animals love. I believe that more people would donate to animal shelters and volunteer to help these animals. I think that I need to learn more like the people who don’t as much about neglect and abuse because I know that there is more to this problem. I know that the more I study this issue, the more I will learn from it, but I also think that I can lead. I think I have the ability to make this issue more known by giving people presentations about it.