Advocating for Meaningful Animal Welfare Policies Through Storytelling
Lack of access to both affordable veterinary care and pet-friendly housing are among the top reasons pet owners cite for making the difficult choice to give up their pets. At a time when many animal shelters are struggling with capacity challenges as more animals are coming into shelters than are leaving, it’s more important than ever for the animal welfare community to come together to advocate for policies to help keep pets in loving homes and out of shelters.
The ASPCA works with lawmakers at the local, state, and federal level to increase access to veterinary care and pet-friendly housing opportunities. However, it’s critical that lawmakers hear directly from their constituents – including pet owners and shelters in their communities – about how these policies can support animals and people, while also enabling shelters to continue their lifesaving work to help more animals in need. As animal sheltering professionals, you see firsthand how the lack of access to veterinary care and pet-friendly housing impacts pet owners, and sharing these personal narratives can be a powerful way to motivate lawmakers to remove barriers to keeping pets and people together.
Here are a few key components for collecting compelling stories to showcase your organization’s impact and advocate for animal welfare policy changes through storytelling:
Gather Story Details
Keeping people and pets together, whenever it is possible and appropriate to do so, should be a priority for the animal welfare community and for society as a whole. To achieve this goal, we must put aside preconceived notions and treat people with respect and dignity whatever their financial or other life circumstances. This is also true when capturing stories to highlight the most urgent issues facing pet owners. Before sharing any story, it’s important to make sure the pet owner or new adopter is comfortable with their story being made public and that you include them in the process so they can review the content. When telling a story that you hope will motivate people to take action, you’ll want to make sure you gather information to help answer these key questions: How did the animal and their pet owner get connected with your organization? What support were you able to provide? What were the barriers to care? How can we enhance policies and services to prevent these situations in the future to ensure pets and people can stay together?
Use Compelling Photos/Videos
Visuals – including photos, videos, graphics, etc. – are a key component to telling any story and it’s important to capture content of animals throughout their journey from intake to adoption or reunification with their owner. The language used to explain their story is equally important, but having compelling visuals to highlight where they started, what your organization did to support them, and how this helped keep families intact can bring their story to life and pull on the heartstrings of the public and lawmakers to compel them to take action to protect animals.
Incorporate a Call-to-Action
Whether you’re communicating with the public, donors, staff, animal welfare partners, or lawmakers, it’s important to attach a clearly defined call-to-action to any story you share to let your audience know what they can do to help. This can include a call to adopt, foster, volunteer, donate or engaging with their policymakers to urge them to take action on animal protection legislation.
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