We are delighted to share a blog written by the Little Paws project, students at Eyüboğlu Educational Institutes who are part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Touching little hearts of the poor animals cleansed and strengthened our souls, it was a truly unique and honoring experience.
Project Overview
We as a group have observed that many animals have been thrown out of their homes and left on the street. We hoped to help these stray animals find a house and get sufficient food to live. We planned to meet up with a local shelter and ask them what the animals in the local area are lacking. We were informed that the animals required treatment for their certain diseases, aside from the diseases we were also told that the animals were lacking shelter.
In order to collect money to help the dogs we planned a concert that would be held by our friends. We sold tickets to said concert at 5 turkish liras per ticket. We used the collected money to help a few animals with their treatments in order to ensure their well being. With the left over money obtained we have organized an event to build shelters for the dogs with other animal lovers in the area. Right now we are planning our budget spending and exploring materials to purchase for the shelters.
Our Journey
We realized while making this project that we have developed skills in certain areas such as Caring, Collaboration, Organization and Time Management. We learned that it is possible to help a wide spread of animals even with a small project such as ours. As we are all pet owners we learned that not all animals are as lucky and healthy as ours, we created an empathetic bond with the animals and overall developed our caring skills.
Everyone in our group has different skills and abilities, by dividing the work to be done into pairs and working together we developed our collaboration skills. While planning out the concert we had to work together with other students, the school board and the animal shelter. With the use of our communication abilities we have developed our organization skills. As we only had a limited time finish our project and plan everything on specific times we increased our ability to manage time. Our biggest challenge has been the lack of money that our group suffers. Although we held a concert it wasn’t sufficient enough to last for the whole project. We hope to overcome this challenge by looking for sponsors to donate money to our group in order to help the sick and homeless animals.
The Next Chapter
We definitely would recommend it! It was a wonderful experienced and helping the animals find shelter and be treated for their diseases made us feel like adults responsible for their environment. One thing we can definitely recommend that those hoping to do a similar do is to plan out their course of action well and definitely be patient.
It definitely was not easy but when you goal to help others that should never be an issue. It takes time to succeed in such a project, although you might feel like time has been lost, for the good of those in need no time is ever lost, one may only gain from such an experience. For the poor souls in need, no sacrifice is in vein.
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
