Overpopulation of animal shelters is a huge animal welfare issue today. Due to irresponsible pet-breeding and pet ownership, there are millions of homeless animals. It is the responsibility of animal shelters to provide safety and shelter for homeless animals while trying to find them permanent homes. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of animals being abandoned, shelters cannot hold all of the animals and resort to either euthanasia in public shelters, where they are obligated to take in all animals that enter the facility, or turning away any new animals, as is the case for many private, no-kill shelters.
Fostering programs are essential to combating this issue. Anyone, from experienced volunteers in rescue groups to the everyday citizen, can be a foster parent depending on the rules that vary from shelter to shelter. Our service project plans to target a group known for pet abandonment in the hopes of changing their behaviors and attitudes about pet ownership. This group is college students. New Brunswick experiences a high rate of animal abandonment due to students buying pets while living off-campus and then not knowing what to do with them once they have to move out.
Rather than discouraging students from having pets at school, we want to encourage them to choose fostering as an option, so that they will have the experience of pet ownership, and know exactly where they can return their pet should they not be able to adopt it when they move out. To raise awareness we are creating a Facebook page with all shelter, rescue group, and pet ownership information, because Facebook is one of the most utilized forms of communication among college students today, and we want our message to be accessible and updatable for many years to come.
