Creating Animal Awareness at IMU

In conjunction with the animal awareness week, IMU Eco Friends’ Club organised a talk on animal awareness. The speaker of this talk, Su Li is a part-time travel writer and the founder of Mongrel Pride Movement. Mongrel Pride Movement was inspired by an incident witnessed by Su Li on her way out to dinner. It was a rainy day and she saw a skinny dog rampaging for food. On her way back home, she came back with food and looked for her, that’s the time she saw her with her puppy. She placed the food there and observed from a distance. What amazed her is that the dog sat down and let her puppy eat all the food. This touching scene make her to want to come out with a way to tackle problems with strays. “If you are staring at a paper, start scraping something rather than continue to stare at it, or else nothing will happen”. So rather than letting her ideas stay as ideas, she choose to begin working it out. “Many Malaysians think pedigree is better than mongrel, this is actually not true.” she added. When purebred is bought from shops, the buyers do not understand their characteristics and ignore their needs. This in turn caused misbehavior of pets and lead to further abuse from their owner, some even abandoned. The vicious cycle starts when the abandoned pets were not neutered and continue to breed more offspring. To put an end to the problems with strays, she decided to introduce the Mongrel Pride Movement programme with the vision to see every mongrel live the quality of their life. “I would like people to know that Mongrel can be pretty too.” Ms Su Li herself had adopted a dog named Russell and it continue to be active in the programme she initiated. “Russell and I kind of had an agreement that we will help each other. So while I provide him with a comfortable home he helps to promote the programme by giving “how to touch a dog” demonstration and donate blood.” She added with a smile. The Mongrel Pride Movement consists of four parts, namely: Solution, Education, Incentive, Sustainable Programme. Table for paw, another programme (part of the sustainable programme), aims to supply left over food and deliver to shelters. There are now 6 restaurants and 1 hotel supplying leftover meats and bones for the strays. “We’ve got good feedback from our volunteers as they say that the task is actually easy and not time consuming, they just need 15 minutes to deliver the leftovers to central freezer or shelter nearby their residence.” Su Li was amazed by the increasing number of kind hearted people who volunteered to help her out. Thinking how can you help? It is actually easy and can be done without causing any hassle. 1) Creating awareness by sharing posts on social media 2) Appeal to vets for free neutral lint 3) Appeal to restaurant for leftover food donation 4) Fund raising projects for TNRM program