Volunteers Mark Homeless Animals’ Day at Shelters

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 15, 2012 (Issue # 1722)

ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT There are about 15 animal shelters in the city; they mostly house cats and dogs.

The Vegan Club is inviting volunteers to mark International Homeless Animals’ Day with a day of activities organized to help local animal shelters on Sunday, Aug. 19. Starting at 10:30 a.m., groups of volunteers will visit a number of local shelters, bringing equipment and assisting shelter personnel with various tasks.

“People usually collect some food and other things for animals and visit several shelters,” Vegan Club coordinator Dmitry Koretsky said this week. “The event is held in several cities; in Moscow they followed our initiative and will have a similar event on Saturday, Aug. 18.”

Although Koretsky and his friends have been volunteering at the shelters for several years, the official volunteer day was established last year. “We timed it to fall near International Homeless Animals’ Day.”

“First we started going to shelters when there were just two or three of us,” he said.

“We met the people that ran the shelters, then we slowly started to draw other people in by creating events on vkontakte [a Russian social network similar to Facebook]. Then those guys started to go there all by themselves because they like it — it’s interesting — and, all in all, the volunteer activities are very engaging.”

According to him, more than 130 volunteers took part last year. “As the moderator, I contact the people from the shelters and ask them what kind of help they need — whether it’s construction work, cleaning the cages or simply walking the dogs,” Koretsky said.

“The shelter’s administrators send me the information about the work they need to be done and the stuff they need, and then I ask for volunteers to be coordinators for each shelter. Usually we work at eight shelters. Each coordinator invites volunteers, meets them somewhere and takes them to the shelter that they are in charge of.”

The volunteers fill in a form on the Internet, indicating the most convenient locations for them to go to, and after receiving this information, Koretsky passes it onto the relevant coordinator, who will then get in touch with the volunteer.

“I write, ‘This is Vasya, he wants to go to the shelter in Pavlovsk, because he lives near Pushkin,’” he said. “The coordinator gets in touch and meets him, and they go to the shelter.”

Volunteers that own cars mark this on the form and can transport food, tools and other volunteers to the destination. “This person writes, ‘I have a car and have room for some shovels and three more people.”

Koretsky is 25, but said that volunteers can vary in age. “They are mostly high school and university students, but there are some older people as well,” he said.

The Vegan Club, which promoted veganism through punk concerts, social events and a vegan bar, existed for 18 months in an industrial area on Ligovsky Prospekt, but had to leave its space in February due to an increase in rent.

However, Koretsky said that the Vegan Club team didn’t just disappear and continued to organize charity hip-hop and hardcore punk concerts in other underground clubs.

“The vegan movement is directly connected to helping animals, so we keep doing what we can,” he said. “During this event, we help shelters for cats and dogs, but also other kinds of animals.”

Koretsky pointed out that it is not necessary to be a vegan to participate in the Vegan Club’s initiatives. “We’re mostly vegans or vegetarians, but we don’t impose any restrictions, like ‘If you’re not a vegan, you’re not coming with us,’ it would be silly,” he said. “Everyone is welcome.”

Having no sponsors, the activists use their own money to buy food and tools, or use funds raised at benefit concerts.

“We don’t raise much money because mostly unknown bands play there, but we use the concerts not only to raise money, but also to spread awareness about the shelters and about what kind of help they need,” Koretsky said. “This has caught some people’s interest and caused them to come to our events.”

One recent benefit, held at Doska club on Kazanskaya Ulitsa, raised 15,000 rubles ($500) for Bozhya Korovka (Ladybug), the only shelter in St. Petersburg for farm animals such as cows, sheep, goats and chickens, as opposed to lost or abandoned pets.

“For example, some rams were living in a laboratory where they were used for experiments, and then they [the researchers] wanted to get rid of them and, instead of having them slaughtered, they gave them to Bozhya Korovka,” Koretsky said.

Another situation was when “a chicken factory went bankrupt and was about to have thousands of chickens slaughtered, but some people went there and carried out as many as they could.”

Another special shelter is Sirin, which looks after wild birds that cannot survive under natural conditions due to injuries and other problems.

According to Koretsky, there are around 15 shelters for homeless animals in St. Petersburg. About eight of them are large and hold up to 400 animals each.

International Homeless Animals’ Day was established by the International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR), the first animal rights organization in the U.S., in 1992.

Find out more details and fill in the form at vk.com/anim1908.