The Donkey Sanctuary UK, Ethiopia Program launched

The Donkey Sanctuary is an animal (donkey and mule) welfare charity based in the UK. It is a pioneering animal welfare charity that began supporting working donkeys in Ethiopia during the fall of the communist regime in Ethiopia, over two decades. It started by teaching clinical year students Donkey (equine) medicine and animal welfare in the then only Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Addis Ababa University while providing community services in four districts surrounding the faculty. The charity built a high –tech Donkey (equine) hospital in the year 1999 to strengthen student training and create a training hub for charity projects in developing countries. Later another Donkey Welfare Clinic was made available to provide services primarily for donkeys in the grain market in Markato. We hope our work raised awareness for the general public. As the demand is nationwide, later we expanded our services to northern and southern Ethiopia and also diversified our interventions. Now we operate in Amhara, Tigray, SNNPRs and Oromia. To accommodate our diversified strategic approaches and also run a full-fledged representation of the charity mission in the UK, we have registered as an independent organization, a Foreign Charity. The country office is based in Addis Ababa. Currently, we run community based projects in Amhara, Tigray, and SNNPRs and community and tertiary projects with College of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture of Addis Ababa University and Alage ATVET College, Ministry of Agriculture and Donkey Assisted Therapy with Cheshire Services Ethiopia. With these projects on the ground we have created demand for donkey welfare, gathered best practices, and ended the suffering of multitudes of donkeys and livelihoods of the poor who rely on them. We want to share our experiences and best practices to those who have common goals. We think the website will serve as an instrument where we display scope of donkey (animal) welfare challenges in developing countries as well as our endeavors and success stories. The charity does not run sanctuary in Ethiopia; we care the welfare of working donkeys supporting people. The site will be a learning forum where our Education Training Resources for School Children, Farmer’s/Donkey users Training resources, Cart and Harness making as well as Animal Health Professionals’ training resources can be shared. It will also serve as a medium for strengthening our collaborations and networks with affiliated institutions including potential donors. On behalf of the Donkey Statuary works in Ethiopia, I would like to thank The Donkey Sanctuary in the UK and all its supporters. As your support continues, the team in each region is committed to reach more donkeys. More is a head of us; currently we reach only a few of the 7 million donkeys.