Why bother?

In many countries around the world stray animals are common. Born feral, or abandoned due to illness or convenience, they are left to fend for themselves on the streets. Neutering of pets is not common practice in a lot of countries, either because it is financially out of the reach of many, or the vets don't know how to neuter small animals properly, or the volunteers don't know how to catch or handle them.

As a result of the ability of animals to reproduce at a much faster rate than people (a dog can easily produce 12 offspring a year, a cat 18) , disposal of surplus animals by poison or drowning is common. While we recognise that stray animals have an important role in many countries, controlling rats and mice organically, we also have to remember that their ability to breed exponentially can cause suffering to the animals and a risk to public health when numbers spiral out of control. We feel it is wrong to controle a population of sentient animals by brutal means, especially when proven, more effective and humane alternatives are existent and no more costly; so we work with NGOs, Municipal bodies and vets, as well as hotel and land owners to adopt more humane methods, such as TNR (Trap-Neuter-Release).

Animal welfare is an important issue on its own. We choose to have companion animals around us which give us love, comapnionship, and which often work for us as rescue or assistance animals. Yet we sometimes allow the most terrible fates to become others of these types of animals that have the misfortune to be unwanted, lost or born feral.

But Animal Welfare is also linked closely to human welfare. Encouraging a respect for all animals teaches people to value and respect life - not least their own and other humans. This is well known and proven. The health of animals is also inextricably linked to the health of people too - control populations of strays and you control the spread of numerous diseases - many of them fatal to humans.

Kismet Account does what we do because we are uniquely placed to do so and because we care. All our teams comprise people who work professionally in animal welfare at home, yet choose to give up their holiday or vacation to do the same work free of charge abroad. We support local animal societies by running our own effective neutering projects, by running training courses, and by equipping local organisations where we can. The volunteers have huge professional animal welfare experience, and simultaneously train, support and help equip local teams to assume the work long term, creating a ripple effect in the wider community. We are the only such UK charity of this size whose rescue and trapping volunteers all have previous professional animal welfare experience relating to stray and feral animals and their safe handling - which means that because we are rational professionals - we are able to liase on an even footing with governments, charities and vets alike, and importantly make cogent arguments based on rationality, not ill-informed opinion or raw emotion.

Our ultimate aim is to no longer be needed in the locations where we work because local projects stem from our involvement. This is already starting to take place in some locations. We always work closely with local vets, government officials and as many local charities as possible - from these relationships, the confidence, skill and knowledge grows for locally led continuation of our work.

We are totally diversity aware and we respect the cultures and people we are woking with. We don't want to damage cultures or make people conform to British ideas of animal welfare - what we would rather do is facilitate the opportunity for the people we work with to bring out the respect for life which is common to all cultures, and use their imagination, drive, and technical skills to build on this. Our teams are young, professional, experienced imaginative and caring - and we think this makes all the difference in what we do.