Donation Appeal 

Background: 



Our first blind rescue – Meher –  is why Project Meher exists today. Our overall rescue efforts started in 2013. While sterilization was always one of our primary goals, we largely focussed on rescuing blind animals and finding them homes among other things. We managed to achieve this despite having no physical shelter, and exclusively run by volunteers and fosters. But that changed in April 2021, when we acquired an individual house in Thane. Through the generosity of sponsors, we could extend help to more animals. The idea was to start a sterilization O.T soon after; but we had a territorial rescued dog on board, and we had to wait until we found him a home first. We welcomed many blind animals in our new abode, cared for them, loved them, gave them the well deserved home environment and were fortunate to see magic unfold in front of your eyes. They all blossomed in full glory and eventually found beautiful forever homes they deserved. Every successful rescue gave us the confidence and conviction to continue our work, and every adopted animal reminded us how working for animals can be rewarding in ways that one couldn’t describe.

In November 2021, Project Meher started low cost vaccination drives for community animals across Thane and Mumbai. This initiative was started to help save the lives of our street dogs who die painful deaths due to Gastro & Parvovirus. We successfully vaccinated 808 animals, complete vaccine doses were administered. Anti rabies vaccine was provided free of cost to all the animals registered under this program. To our surprise, 80% of animals registered were not sterilized. This strengthened our vision to start low cost spay – neuter at the earliest.


And now that our territorial rescue dog has found his forever home, we have the time and heart all set to focus on the implementation of this project.

Pilot Project: 
We conducted a pilot low-cost sterilization project between 1-10 June 2022 in Andheri, Mumbai, where we operated on 4 dogs and 2 cats for animal birth control surgery. We did this by networking with responsible caregivers and the veterinary clinic.


The surgery was conducted by a qualified veterinary surgeon. Project Meher coordinated the procedure. We also routinely followed up for pre-and post-operative care until complete recovery. The dogs and cats were transferred by their routine feeders at a paid foster facility for post-operative management. The dogs and cats were successfully released back into their territorial space soon after.

Our Aims & Objectives:

Aims:

1. To conduct low-cost community dog and cat sterilizations by qualified veterinary surgeons in coordination with caregivers and other stakeholders.
2. To provide low-cost services for preventative healthcare of stray – owned/adopted/fostered cats and dogs through community engagement.
3. To provide low-cost minor veterinary services for community dogs and cats.
4. Provide support to other charitable organizations in Thane, Mumbai & Navi Mumbai to strengthen community dog & cat care services.

Objectives:
1. To identify unsterilized community dogs and cats having a responsible caregiver
2. To schedule and conduct  low-cost, spaying/ castration surgeries of community dogs and cats
3. To guide caregivers on responsible post-operative care, and network with foster care groups, if needed.
4. To collaborate with other local organizations for accomplishing the above objectives.

Beneficiaries:

• Direct beneficiaries:   community/adopted/fostered/stray dogs and cats
• Indirect beneficiaries: fosters, caregivers, adopters, feeders

Location: Stationary appointments
Trained Team: Veterinarian, Para-veterinarian, coordinator & animal caregiver.

Major cost factors where we need to invest with sponsors support:

 The 2 major but vital investments are the gas anesthesia machine & CBC machine.

Gas anesthesia machine: street animals come with unknown history and may have compromised health. Administering general anesthesia on them could be risky. We want to ensure we follow the best medical practices with no compromises.

Blood test Machine: blood test is mandatory before any surgical procedures. This vital step is skipped when it comes to stray animals to minimize costs and the lack of blood test machines. We want to ensure we do basic CBC tests before proceeding with any surgeries. We will be providing blood tests at an extremely low cost (not to profit)

As of today, we have 2 surgeons on board who have committed to visit twice a week. We need 2 months of time to get a full time veterinary surgeon on board. The process of looking for a full time surgeon has already started. Once we have a full time surgeon on board, the surgery costs will further reduce. Karma foundation of Pune has very kindly offered to train our full time vet for various other surgeries and ethical spay-neuter protocols.

We are grateful to have secured a sponsor for our space for the past 1.5 years. The staff salary, electricity and rent are already covered. We now need sponsors like you on board to execute this low cost spay/neuter program for our beloved streeties. Our goals are realistic, and with your support this can be implemented well.

It's vital to mention that since Project Meher works on the ground and closely with the caregivers, we receive calls and requests to start low cost sterilization camps everyday. We have been sponsoring 5 spay/neuter surgeries at private clinics (per surgery 5,500/-) for people living in economically downtrodden localities (who own dogs and love them dearly) for the past 1.5 years consistently. Project Meher has also been providing financial aid to fellow rescuers who needed help with major surgeries at private clinics to save their animals. We try to address each issue to the best of our abilities but we can only go so far owing to our own limited resources.

But by partnering with all of you, we are sure we will be able to help many more community animals in need. Needless to say, Project Meher's focus is always on the quality of work rather than numbers.

There is no denying that we dream big. We couldn't have come this far if we hadn’t. Our animals are thriving in beautiful homes only because we dreamed big and gave all our energy to it. We are able to safeguard the lives of so many community animals with our low cost vaccination drive. And now, we can go a step extra.

Come, partner with Project Meher to save one tail at a time ♡🐾 


We hope you’re able to contribute for our upcoming
spay - neuter project and help us achieve our goals of
helping more animals in need!