Compassion For Camden :: AWA Responds)

January 10, 2005

The Animal Welfare Association is proud of our accomplishments with the mobile spay neuter van. Our veterinary team is on the road performing low-cost spay & neuter surgeries three to four days each week, spending each Friday in the city of Camden. Since the winter of 2001 we have performed 3899 surgeries on the van, 959 in the city of Camden.

Each year the number of surgeries performed grows, last year showing 1715 surgeries on the van and another 5813 surgeries completed in our stationary clinic here in Voorhees. As you can see, our commitment to ending pet overpopulation remains steadfast.

While the overall demand for our mobile spay and neuter services increases, and despite our best efforts and extensive adverting, the Camden City program continues to be terribly underutilized. In the beginning, AWA went to fire stations twice a week. Most days only two or three clients showed up.

Eighteen months ago, in addition to the fire stations we began going to community centers in an effort to include more neighborhoods and have more exposure. Despite offering 200 FREE surgeries, advertising on the Hispanic radio station, offering free food with surgery, and distribution of flyer and schedules throughout the city, attendance remained abysmal.

We were doing an excellent job of taking the services to Camden residents, but somehow missing boat on convincing residents to take advantage of our services. The difficult decision was made to take the van to Camden only one day a week and rethink our methods of "getting the word out". Our van has not been inactive at all; the fact of the matter is that it travels throughout our region and the state providing low cost surgeries to shelter, feral cat caretakers, rescue groups and local communities.

In October, 20,000 brochures promoting the benefits of spay/neuter have just been printed and 10,000 copies in Spanish are in the works. These brochures are for the City of Camden alone and were designed and printed with the hopes of providing incentive and motivations for people to sterilize their animals. In addition, five thousand posters were printed and are in the process of being distributed.

The $250,000 grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation was for FIRST year start up costs and expended that first year. The bulk of those funds were used to purchase a specially customized vehicle with a surgical suite and animal recovery area.

Funding in subsequent years has been primarily out of AWA coffers with limited grant funding. The costs associated with keeping the spay/neuter van on the road each are in excess of $100,000. It is sometimes a very fine line between offering affordable and free services and remaining a solvent organization. If we "give away the farm" there will be no AWA to help animals in the future.

Our commitment to the animals in the city of Camden has been, and remains strong. AWA is in the process of raising funds to purchase a new panel van. Our current, twenty year old van has become unsafe to keep on the road much longer. One of the many uses of this van will be to provide community outreach services in the city of Camden on a regular basis. As a part of this outreach, we will offer resources such as free collars, training, information and let people know about spay/neuter and other available resources such as our low-cost vaccine clinic for Camden residents.

This outreach is a positive, proactive program which will promote responsible pet care. If animals are simply removed from the street with no effort made to change human behavior, the neglect will remain at the same level. It is our hope that by providing education and resources to city residents we can change the thinking and effect change. Granted, it may be a slow process but we remain steadfast in our resolve to end the suffering.

Please feel free to contact me at 856-424-2288 x 109 or at kdixon@snip.net if you would like to discuss Camden, have ideas to promote our Camden program or wish to become more active in the mission. We desperately need volunteers who are committed to work with us as we strive for a more humane tomorrow.

Karen Dixon
Executive Director