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The goal of the community engagement project
The goal of the community engagement project
The Community Engagement Project, as proposed and designed by Dr. Carol Conzelman, is designed to engage students of the University of Colorado, Boulder in the community and to identify a problem that they want to learn more about through participant observation. This allows the students the opportunity to get hands-on with a group that is directly dealing with their chosen problem. The goal is to give students first-person research experience and provoke further research into the root causes of their problem, the impacts, and real or potential solutions.
The History and Mission of the Longmont Humane Society
The History and Mission of the Longmont Humane Society
The Longmont Humane Society was created in 1972 when the Longmont branch of the Boulder County Humane Society officially became the its own separate entity. For the majority of the 1970s, the situation at the shelter remained rough, and animal welfare was quite low: 72% of the animals who were taken in by the shelter were eventually euthanized. In 1985, a new shelter was opened with committed directors and staff, and actually one of the only shelters in the US to be recognized by the AHA's Standards of Excellence program.
Because of this rough beginning to the shelter, the new staff were decidedly ready to change the image from one of sadness and mistreatment to one of love and equality. In this new era of the Longmont Humane Society, the focus shifted to the happiness and wellbeing of the animals through the love and hard work of the staff and volunteers. Their goal is to provide temporary shelter for thousands of animals annually, and in doing so help educate the community about proper animal care and how to ensure animals are treated equally to people.
The Longmont Humane Society has a few main portions; the society itself, a thrift store, and education sessions in the public. All of these components are part of their core goal of ensuring that animals receive the best care inside and outside of the shelter. In a perfect world, they wouldn't have any animals in the shelter there would be no need to education on animal care and rights. The shelter itself is cared for by both staff and volunteers, of which I was a volunteer. The volunteers are trained monthly, and must work their way up from laundry and dishes to direct animal work. This is to ensure that the animals are not mistreated due to negligence or accidents.
The thrift store is run to garner funds to continue to expand and maintain the shelter to ensure the animals are happy and healthy. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 closures, they have decided to not reopen the thrift store after the restrictions are lifted. While it brought in profits for the shelter, it was not economically possible enough to maintain both the store and the shelter. Thankfully though, they are still able to continue to offer educational sessions for groups and schools.
My role in the Longmont Humane society
My role in the Longmont Humane society
As a new volunteer, I was first required to perform 6 hours of service that did not directly involve the animals in order to get acquainted with staff and the layout of the shelter. Tasks that I performed during these 6 hours were bedding laundry, food organization, storage adjustments, helping guests navigate, and ensuring that the other volunteers had the items and materials they needed to be successful. Once those 6 hours were up, I was able to receive training to initially focus on either cats (Feline Friend) or dogs (Dog-Focused Volunteer; the naming for this one was much less compelling). I opted to be a Feline Friend, which entailed preparing cats for visits, cleaning their kennels, playing and socializing with them, and walking them outside in a baby stroller (this was, in all honesty, the greatest part of the entire project).
I was relatively low-level in the organization, as I was a new, unpaid volunteer, so I was never involved in any decisions made by the staff. However, I was present for many of the impacts of the decisions made by the shelter, which was arguably more important to my research than intruding myself into the decision-making process itself.
By volunteering here, I was not only able to experience participant observation (discussed later) in a place that deals greatly with my topic of animal rights, but also fulfil a dream of mine of working at a humane society to eventually become a Doctor of Veterinarian medicine. As such, my work there meant a lot to me both academically and personally.
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