Animal welfare: Teaching them from young

Published on: Monday, October 19, 2020

By: Dr Roslee bin Haji Abbas

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Dr Roslee delivering his talk at the school, recently.

HElping Animals Rescue Team (Heart)

IN MALAYSIA, the crisis of stray overpopulation is getting more and more serious due to the lack of awareness and social concern on the issue.

Many countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States of America have already started to take serious efforts in solving the problem and there are successful results to prove that the problem is solvable if the awareness towards the issue is educated among the people.

However, Malaysia is still at the beginning stage of helping the poor strays and Heart could help in creating the awareness among the society.

Education is fundamental to helping raise awareness for the plight of homeless animals in Kota Kinabalu and Sabah in general. The more you know the more power you have to be the change.

Today, in the fast-changing world, it has become very essential for a child to learn the best things in life. One such thing is nurture a love of animals that will lay the foundation for him/her to become a better human being. Instilling such values start at a very early stage.

Findings from Heart’s research have shown that children learn cruel and violent behaviour from those around them, and that animal abuse often precedes violence toward other people. Indeed, in almost every major act of violence, we have found animal abuse in the perpetrator’s background.

This common origin of violence perpetrated against animals and against people makes it imperative that we teach compassion and demonstrate concern for all living things.

By the time young people exhibit cruel behaviour toward animals it is often very difficult to change that behaviour, making it essential that adults in every part of the community help children learn to treat animals with kindness.

While not every child who is cruel to a pet grows up to be a criminal, there is a strong correlation between cruel behaviour toward animals and lack of empathy for human beings.

For the past years, Heart had conducted talks for various audiences, including primary and secondary schools, junior colleges and tertiary institutions. Through these talks, participants or students in particular had found out what it takes to keep their furry friends happy, and also learn valuable and easy-to-use tips to help them better understand their pet and homeless animals as well.

One of our aims to give talks to schools is to inculcate love and compassion for animals in children and youth. This is essential to create a generation that cares for animals and to stop animal abuse.

On Sept 28, Heart’s Dr Roslee was invited by La Salle Secondary School in Tanjung Aru to raise awareness on animal welfare. Our presence was to instil love in taking care of the homeless animals, promote responsible pet ownership, getting to know and create awareness on the existence of Heart to the students. Thanks to the Teacher Advisor, Rosmawati, for giving us the chance to showcase Heart.

This talk is to impart the students with the right attitude in treating and caring the homeless/stray animals. Heart Education Programs.

Develop the right skills and attitude in caring for animals through our education programs.

Students may not only learn to appreciate and respect animals, increase their interests towards conserving the environment and they will also pick up valuable lessons for life!

The main objectives of the talk were:

To encourage a wider awareness of and respect for all living things and inculcate responsible and caring attitudes.
To raise awareness and provide guidelines on the animals welfare issues facing today’s young people
To promote human-animal interaction as part of child development.
The topics that we covered during this talk were:
What does Heart do?
Caring for pet
Awareness on homeless animals, animal suffering and animal cruelty
Changing public attitudes and behaviour towards the issue of stray animals
Sabah Animal Welfare Enactment 2015

Our future depends on our children. The more they are engaged to their natural surroundings, they will realise how important it is to take care of the environment and animals.

This is because when they (children) have love towards the animals they would care and have the responsibility to take efforts to create a better world for the future generations.

What they learn in school, they will be able to remember and they will spread the message to their parents, guardians, siblings at home.

At Heart, we believe in organising programmes that create empathy and also nurture youth animal activists who can stand up not only for the oppressed, but also those who cannot speak for themselves.

We do believe after giving the talk, the students have a greater understanding of the challenges faced by homeless/street animals and how they can help homeless animals in need.

Heart is a non-profit organisation, with a very limited financial resource it increases the difficulty to give raising awareness animal talks in schools and residential areas that could educate the young generations and the public in Kota Kinabalu regarding stray animals.

We need your support to fund our raising awareness talk/project. Would you consider donating to help us achieve our mission?

If you have any questions, we would be happy to provide you with more information about how you can help support our work at Heart.

We greatly appreciate your donation, and it will be used to fund our raising animal awareness projects in schools and residential areas. If you wish to contribute, please send your donation to:

CIMB BANK BERHAD

Account no.

70 3762569 4

Please join us! With your donation. Have a heart. Donate.

Last but not least, we would like to express our appreciation to the students, headmistress, Oliver (Heart volunteer) teachers, especially Rosmawati and Fahmi for their involvement.