You’ld have to be a bit miffed if the name you chose for your shelter reform model got picked up by the U.N. for it’s anti AIDs campaign. That’s what’s happened to AWL Queensland and their Getting to Zero model. It’s hard to compete with a U.N. funded campaign but there are plenty of other good reasons to get behind the No Kill movement instead of trying to rebadge it.
No Kill is an Established Brand
Despite Nathan Winograd’s books not being sold in Australian bookstores and less than half of shelter leadership having read them, we’re living in a global village where information travels freely across borders. The following table shows Australians search for ‘No Kill’ twenty times more than they search for ‘getting to zero’.
No Kill is Simple To Explain and Understand
Just like ‘No Kill’, G2Z calls for a live release rate of above 90% for animals admitted to pounds and shelters. One place it falls down is in communicating exactly how to achieve that. The No Kill Equation spells it out plain and simple.
The mandatory No Kill programs and services include:
- TNR Program
- High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter
- Rescue Groups
- Foster Care
- Comprehensive Adoption Programs
- Pet Retention
- Medical and Behavior Prevention & Rehabilitation
- Public Relations/Community Involvement
- Volunteers
- Proactive Redemptions
- A Compassionate Director
Getting to Zero or Starting from Scratch?
If you google for ‘No Kill’ you will find oodles of information including wikipedia, blogs, news reports, books and more. No Kill has been successfully achieved in many U.S. cities and has withstood attacks that include misinformation campaigns by the likes of PETA and the ASPCA.
The G2Z site suggests that No Kill shelters are not open admission. As the president of Victoria’s 3rd largest open admission animal shelter I can tell you this is not true. It goes on to state that “No Kill implies no animal should be killed” but that “Getting to Zero” somehow doesn’t. Huh? Either term could be read to mean “don’t kill pets”. Surely it would be easier to help educate people about what No Kill really means than start a new movement.
The No Kill movement is a Tribe. A global tribe with leaders who get written about in Forbes and spoken about in a TED talk by Seth Godin. We can do more by growing the No Kill movement than trying to start a new Tribe. To do so without good reason would mean lost opportunities and wasted resources.
I’d like to leave you with the talk that introduced me to No Kill in 2009 and led to me realising that we can and must do more for these animals.
