Helping Animals Knows No Boundaries

We're pleased to have a guest blogger this week. Enjoy a view into Israel's animal rescue work through the eyes of Alex Wolfgang:

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to ISRAEL for a ten day educational/recreational tour through the homeland of “my people.” Although, I’m hardly religious, I still felt enough of a cultural connection with my Jewish heritage to want to explore this country. The sights I saw were mind blowing: beautiful mountains, relaxing beaches, and modern cities compacted into a small country about the size of the state of New Jersey. And even though my eyes were often distracted by the exceptionally attractive women I spotted walking the streets, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this astonishing little country has a severe stray animal overpopulation problem. While I recognize the similar problem with animals in the US, what I saw in Israel was incomparable! With each city we visited, I saw more and more homeless pets-especially cats. Particularly, I remember walking through an outdoor market in Tel-Aviv and counting over 30 stray cats! I further explored the situation to find a few of these felines had a notch on one of their ears (indicating that they had been spayed or neutered.) What a relief! There are some animal activists here!

When I returned home I began researching the situation. I contacted Nina Natelson, the director of the Israeli advocacy group CHAI (Compassion for Helping Animals in Israel). I asked to her to educate me on the major issues and expressed my interest in wanting to help with their efforts. This group is awesome! They’re producing a humane education curriculum- a 450 page book with over 100 lesson plans, fact sheets, resource lists, etc. on animal related issues. And, what’s even more exciting is they have a Mobile Spay/Neuter clinic-the first of its kind in the Middle East. Unfortunately, due to lack of funding, the clinic has temporarily suspended their services! Their expenses are quite high because they pay 3 salaries (vet, assistant, driver), gas, maintenance, supplies and advertising (to attract clients). Fees charged for their low-cost services cover about ½ of their costs. Additionally, they are expecting some grant money from the Israeli government which will cover another ¼ of the costs. They just need help with the last ¼-about $25,000.

Again, I’ve never been religious. But, I do believe that we all have a purpose in life. My purpose has always been to help animals. Like hundreds of other visitors in Israel, I saw this massive problem of animal overpopulation; I saw starvation, dehydration and disease. And rather than just ignoring this problem, I’m vowing to make a difference. I want to somehow raise this $25,000 for CHAI (www.chai-online.org). I’m in for $500; any fundraising ideas for coming up with the rest?