Friday, March 11, 2011

What are we getting ourselves into?! :)

So with only 7 hours till we head out for a fantastic week of service done by the Animal Welfare- Destination 2011 trip! For the week of March 14-18th there will be nine college students and one adviser volunteering at The Carolina Tiger Rescue Center in Pittsboro, NC. We are wanting to share our experience with everyone who wants to know with our blog! We will be sharing about the facility that we are volunteering, the people that are impacting our time here, telling you what exactly we will be doing on a daily basis, and then giving all of our individual experiences.

For preparation of our trip we have talked about the different laws that are in effect in the different states about owning exotic animals. We will be volunteering with a tiger rescue that has animals that were once owned by the general public and got too hard to take care of. Some of the group was able to visit The Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake and see animals in captivity. Its different when you go to the zoo and just look at all the animals and when you go to a center and get a tour and see what it is really like for the animals as well as the volunteers that are taking care of the animals. We are still in the process of learning more about the difference of animal welfare and animal rights and this trip will help to explain the differences.

We are all hopeful to learn more about the animals that are at the facilities, as well as why they are at the facility. We are so grateful that we will be able to help the facility out by helping with maintenance. Our group is very different with the same passion of animals. There are some of us that this can be our first time leaving the area and going out to help another community for the first time... in our group we have fears of being away from home, not getting a full experience, or just not being able to fully help the facility that we will be volunteering with. We all have great hopes, optimism and are going in with open hearts and minds and all ready to DO WORK!

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