Tree Of Life For Animals

The Companion Care Veterinary Group have 39 surgeries in the UK. Many of these are based within the Pets at Home superstore with the odd one acting as a stand alone surgery.

We are very pleased to announce that Companion Care has very kindly adopted our Animal Money Tree scheme into all their surgeries for a month and the money raised will be sent to the Tree of Life for Animals veterinary hospital in India to help them continue their rescue work.

The Animal Money Tree is a very simple idea - a poster is displayed in the waiting room and clients can sponsor an animal in India for £1, in return for adding a sticker to the poster with their pets name on it.

If you work in a veterinary surgery or have a local veterinary surgery and would like to help the Tree of Life For Animals to grow then this is a very easy way for you to get involved.

Let us know if you are interested and we will send you out a poster and instructions to help you along. Email us at fundraising@tolfa.org.uk to request a pack.

GiveMeaning.com is an online fundraising site. This online community is open to everybody who wishes to join and it allows charities, charitable organizations and individuals a unique way to reach people and raise funds for specific projects.

The idea is to write the proposal for a specific project for your chosen charity. Get 100 people to vote that your cause is a worthwhile one within 30 days and your proposal can become a project. That is when it will start to attract sponsors which can then lead onto this dream becoming a reality.

We would like our project to be a Puppy Vaccination programme which will allow us to vaccinate as many puppies as possible from 7 diseases; 3 of which are Rabies, Distemper and Parvovirus. By trying to eradicate Rabies in the dog population, we will also benefit the human population in which rabies is a real threat - India has the highest human death rate from rabies in the world.

Our proposal is now live so please go along and vote for our Puppy Vaccination Programme.

Please vote now

In October 2008 Catriona O’Leary, a friend and supporter of our charity, will be raising money for TOLFA by riding the old nomadic trail from Udaipur to Pushkar ka Mela: the biggest camel fair in the world. The ride will see Catriona and her horse Chandra cover some 400kms over desert roads and dusty tracks.

Catriona says;

‘I have known Rachel Wright, the founder, for a number of years and having seen various animal charities throughout Asia I think that hers is one of the best. By raising money for the Tree of Life for Animals, I hope to make it possible for them to provide mobile education camps in nearby villages, providing training in basic animal care for farmers’.

Catriona is currently appealing for donations on GiveMeaning.com, if she gets 100 votes before 27 October 2007 she will be able to receive donations from anyone, worldwide. Please Vote for her Pushkar 2008 ride here and help make it a reality.

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“Working together to Make Rabies History!” – shouted the slogan and T.O.L.F.A. tucked away in a small corner of the planet, marked the day with it’s own charming programme. It indeed felt good to be part of a global push, with hundreds of other charities and NGO’s marking the day, in their own special way.

TOLFA Staff beside our new sign

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On a sunny Sunday morning in September, 8 ladies - 1 in Liverpool, 7 in London - took part in the 5km Hydroactive Womens Challenge.

This is an annual event that encourages all women to take part in a race with one main aim, to raise money for a variety of charities and good causes, large or small. Our 8 lovely ladies were of course raising money on behalf of TOLFA.

Ready for the challenge

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I found TOLFA by a happy accident whilst en-route to another animal hospital in Jaipur in November 2006. I never made it to the other hospital and had the great privilege to volunteer at TOLFA for several months.

When you arrive at the hospital, which is in the middle of an incredibly beautiful and rural desert valley, you are greeted by a happy collection of limping, twitching and wobbling animals, and the hyperactive Loopy Loo, plus the cheerful welcoming smiles of the fantastic team of staff.

Having no veterinary or nursing qualifications I soon found my niche as the ‘doctor of love’ dispensing huge amounts of TLC (and biscuits!) to the dogs and puppies, and caring for the very sick.

The work at TOLFA is often heartbreaking; caring for animals for days, sometimes weeks, only for them to die. But it is enormously rewarding too; seeing animals recover from seemingly impossible odds and having happy, healthy dogs, that you have treated, come up and greet you in the local towns. In this kind of work you have to focus on what you can do, not what you can’t.

The impact on the local community cannot be underestimated; the work on sterilisations, rabies control and rescue work of sick and injured animals of all shapes and sizes; providing valuable, regular employment for the dedicated team of staff; providing free clinics for the livestock of incredibly poor local farmers who manage, somehow, to scratch a living in the valley.

A trip to India is always going to be fascinating and memorable, but to spend time at TOLFA in this amazing region of Rajasthan is truly an unforgettable, life changing experience.

Kym Barratt November 2006 – July 2007

Kym and friends

Did you know that on 8th September 2007 it is World Rabies Day?

Did you know that one person dies from rabies every 10 minutes! That’s about 55,000 people every year.

Did you know Rabies is 100% preventable!

The aim of World Rabies Day is to raise awareness and get people working together to Make Rabies History!

There are special events going on all over the world to make the eradication of Rabies a reality. Visit the World Rabies Day website and find out more.

Good news: After months of preparation and more months of waiting we finally got our charitable status yesterday.

Not only does this mean that our work is recognised as being charitable, but by being a registered charity in the UK it enables us to register at JustGiving (which will help our fundraisers raise money online), allows us to claim back GiftAid (the government will give us back 28p for every pound donated by UK taxpayers) and it will enable us to apply for funding and grants from a wider range of organisations.

Being a fully fledged charity opens up so many more opportunities for us now to continue our work and help us grow.