Bensalem, PA 19020
09/09/2010 04:09 PM
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An orientation session was conducted on June 23, 2010. If you submitted an application prior to that date and did not get an invitation, it is because your application suggested you would be better suited for a shelter that wants volunteers to walk or care for their animals or a no kill rescue group that will turn away unadoptable animals or when space becomes an issue. The upcoming months will be spent training volunteers as they advance in their roles. I will hold another orientation session as turnover and program development creates entry level positions. Most likely, new volunteers will be needed to call the adopters of young kittens to make sure that they have followed through on their contracted spay and neuter of their pets. All other positions may not have openings until 2011.
We need volunteer assistance to move animals out of our busy shelter environment as quickly as possible and help us to maintain their good health while they are here.
Looking to work directly with the animals? We take a conservative approach to risk management. Entry level volunteering is not going to include working with the animals. Seasoned adult volunteers working with the animals will be limited to handling them for photographs or during the adoption procedure. Volunteering will never involve cleaning cages or feeding animals. Cleaning cages in a high intake shelter environment involves powerful cleansers and the wisdom to identify needs based upon observations at the time of cleaning. Additionally, cleaning is a high risk activity in terms of slip and fall accidents on the wet surfaces of the dog kennel and handling the cats and small animals during the cleaning process. We are not willing to risk inury to a volunteer with the bites that have and do occur during cleaning and feeding.
Experience with walking dogs or socializing cats? Walking the dogs or cuddling the cats are high risk activities in a high intake volume shelter environment. There are no vaccines for upper respiratory infections in cats. We vaccinate each dog for kennel cough and canine influenza as soon as it can be safely handled. There are strains of kennel cough that are vaccine resistent. Animals that had respiratory infections at the time of intake are shedding the virus or bacteria prior to the onset of symptoms. The simple act of two dogs barking at each other as they pass and a cat sniffing you and leaving tiny droplets behind can spread infection.
Additionally, parasite infections are being shed by the animals when they are wormed or treated for fleas. Some digestive tract worm eggs can live in the soil for years or be on a cat's paws, claws, and mouth if they have just cleaned themselves. Some parasite infections are contagious to humans. Shelter conditions make it difficult to ensure that animals using a common area will not spread parasites. Certain infestations can render an animal unadoptable to the average pet owner or cause illness to others. For these reasons we are not looking to increase our socialization programming. As stated above, we want volunteers to move animals out of our system as quickly as possible to keep the homeless animals and their new peers in an adoptive home healthy.
While we respect our peers that allow volunteers to walk and socialize their animals in a high intake shelter environment, we also watch their illness rates reach 95%. This renders 95% of their animals unadoptable to most potential adopters. Our top priorities include the health and well-being of the animals entrusted to our care and those in their new homes and community.
Interested in Fostering? This is a very important service. We place animals in need of rescue and foster care with private groups as opposed to managing our own foster care programs. Several of our staff members volunteer to foster and adopt out animals through Delaware Valley Second Chance for Animals (http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/NJ498.html . While this is a New Jersey based organization, adoption days are held in Langhorne and Newtown, Bucks County. You will be expected to attend these weekend events with your foster pet. If you are interested in preventing euthanasia by providing foster care, direct care, or socialization for an animal, do a shelter search on Petfinder.com by your zip code. There are many worthy organizations in need of volunteers who will work with their animals.
Interested in working with an animal to prevent homelessness or euthanasia? If you are desirous of helping an animal directly and are unable to own or foster one, helping a family member or friend who works long hours to provide a fulfilling life for their trusted pet can prevent a lot of frustration for everyone involved and the euthanasia of that animal if the pet is surrendered with one of the many bad habits that animals develop when left alone for the bulk of their waking hours. Volunteers will not rehabilitate an unadoptable animal because of the associated risks.
Don’t want a long term commitment? Training and placement of volunteers with under 20 total hours to give (or a fast approaching deadline) is not an efficient use of our resources. If this time frame describes your need, please choose to hold a bake or other sale. Bake and candy sales are most popular. Volunteers bake or get friends and family to make cookies, cup cakes ,brownies, muffins, chocolate covered pretzels, lollipops, cakes, or pies, package and offer the baked goods to visitors in our shelter lobby during adoption hours or in front of our building during clinic hours. Selling hoagies and water bottles has been suggested. We are prohibited by health codes from preparing and selling hot foods. We are open to other suggestions that will meet volunteer hours, serve our mission or visitors, and raise funds to help the animals. Please feel free to present your own project idea. If you wish to continue to volunteer when your sale or project is complete, I will gladly invite you to the next orientation session when ongoing needs open. Email your availability and sale commitment (bake, candy or other, please specify) or project offer to whshelpline@aol.com if you have under 20 hours to give.
Community Service hours to fill? Kindly complete an application via the link below. Attach the documentation from the organization requiring the community service work, the deadline for hours and the total number of hours required. If a letter is needed or a form has to be completed, attach all necessary information to do this. Also note that there may be a month, or two or more in between orientation sessions depending upon our needs and volunteer turn over. If your deadline is 2-3 months away, please plan on conducting a bake sale or series of sales to make complete your hours. How do you feel about owning, or adding, a pet to your family? Some volunteers come (or become) consumed with the goal of adopting a pet for themselves (or others) and this proves counterproductive to volunteer fulfillment and longevity We need volunteers with the desire to serve the mission and good boundaries. If you are not sure about owning a pet or adding to your family, please sort out this feeling before deciding to volunteer. The constant exposure to the animals is either frustrating (if you or your parents decide against pet ownership) or volunteers get off task easily and become counter-productive with evaluating animals. When a new volunteer does adopt, we typically loose them as a volunteer. Now that animal is meeting their need to nurture and save an animal.
When people note an animal of interest to a friend or family member, frustration ensues as they want that animal held for the interested party or they want to give that friend, family member or rescuer an edge in adopting. Highly adoptable dogs place quickly and we want to place adoptable cats as quickly as possible. Instead of volunteering with a wishlist for friends and family, encourage interested adopters to visit our shelter as often as possible at the start of adoption hours or use the internet to learn more about area shelters, rescues, and their adoption procedures. We also recommend that you refrain from efforts to guilt or otherwise convince an uninterested adopter into taking an animal. Pet ownership is labor intensive and it is not fair to anyone to make them compromise on what may be very sound reasons for not wanting a pet.
Unadoptable animals are either appropriate for established rescue contacts or will be made adoptable through treatment and offered to visitors following our adoption procedure. If an animal is euthanized, it is because the risk factors were too high to ensure the safety of that animal or others. If you may be open to adopting, do so before applying to volunteer.
Looking to keep your middle or high school-aged youth busy during your work day? Successful teen volunteers typically have the drive, maturity, and confidence to contact us on their own. If your child is not interested, mature, or available enough to contact us on their own, a fulfilling match in our volunteer program is highly unlikely. The nature of our volunteer roles and the volunteer director's part-time position render a plan for a youth volunteer to spend daily hours at the Society an inappropriate expectation. We are not in a position to provide this level of supervision to youth volunteers. We can not accomodate requests to drop teens off on your way to work and pick them up on your way home one or more days a week. Summer employment, camps, or supervision arrangements with friends or family are more appropriate than a volunteer role at our facility.
Enquire with your faith-based communities and municipalities to see if teen volunteers are needed as assistants or counselors-in-training for their various programs. Bucks County's libraries run programs for children during the summer with teen volunteer assistance. They typically accomodate volunteers during the school year for clerical duties. If you desire or your teen needs full-time supervision, you are looking for a service, not to provide a service. Trying to meet the need for supervision of a teen with the offer of dropping them off at a service organization is frustrating for all. Under 13? — The level of supervision required to ensure children meet our detail-oriented and communication-centered volunteer needs typically exceeds their ability to meet these needs. For this reason, children are asked to conduct a bake or candy sale in our shelter lobby or outside in front of the shelter during clinic hours. Others have raffled off baskets or sold friendship bracelets.
If a child is between 4th and 9th grade in school, our Pet Pals program run by our education department may be better suited than a volunteer role for that young animal lover. Please contact our Director of Humane Education, Janice at whsedu@aol.com for more information on the Pet Pals program. This is not a volunteer program, this is an education program where children will learn about a variety of animal welfare topics. Youth will complete a craft at each session along with a visit to the kennels. Saturday sessions run from September through May.
If your child is interested in becoming a vet; academic camps, SAT prep courses, PSAT testing, and projects through your local 4-H club are more appropriate than our volunteer roles.
We have several openings we filled with our June of 2010 orientation session:
Volunteers call the reporters of lost and found pets to cull out the reports on animals that have already been reunited with their owners so staff members have accurate information to compare to lost pets that are surrendered to our facility or reported as lost via phone . We also want to make sure those owners whose pets remain missing are visiting our facility to be reunited with their lost pet.
Volunteers call each adopter to check on the well-being of their new family member and ensure that contractual agreements are being met and referrals are made to our trainer or back to an adoption counselor if the adopter is experiencing a need that requires our attention.
Volunteers greet guests and callers to our busy walk-in veterinary clinic to provide an extra layer of customer service in this tight economy that has increased our volume of clinic and hospital clients who experience multi-hour waits each clinic day.
Volunteers keep our available animal internet pet list up to date. This is our most popular program as it involves the greatest amount of direction interaction with the animals as they are photographed for the web site. As of January 2010 we have volunteer performing updates at the close of each adoption day. Volunteers meticulously gather and enter data into a template so potential adopters have accurate information. New volunteers may be trained to fill in when existing volunteers are absent or on vacation.
Volunteers act as tour guides during our busiest adoption hours on Saturdays and Wednesday evenings. As of January 2010, we have tour guides during these times and any new tour guides will be asked to fill in as needed.
Volunteers fulfill clerical and human service roles at the Society to help us to serve the mission of the Society to prevent the abuse and neglect of animals. Seasoned volunteers conduct an adoption from start to finish and represent us at community events and dog shows. Like our staff members, commited volunteers often cross train in several areas to be flexible enough to meet the most pressing need on a given day. Saturday tour guides do the pet list updates at the close of the adoption day after gathering information over the course of the adoption day. Please follow the links at the bottom of this page. If the review of your application suggests that a fulfilling volunteer match is possible; given philosophies, schedules, time frames, and openings, the volunteer director will contact you via email to invite you to an orientation session in which you can learn more about the Women's Humane Society. The 2 hour orientation session will be followed by a training and assessment period before a volunteer match is finalized. Fulfillment of our mission is a top priority. Sessions are conducted every two to three months to allow for the training, placement, and turnover of each new group of volunteers. There may be a greater span of time between orientation sessions if turnover is low. Applicants may also be invited for an individual orientation session if Society needs match an applicant's skills, availability, and interests.
Contact Information: Kelly L. VanValkenburgh MA, Director of Volunteer Services Email Address: whshelpline@aol.com
Email is by far the most efficient means to get answers to your questions. I am on site at our facility on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and evenings. My time at our facility is dominated by program development, training, and supervision of volunteers. I prioritize these roles over response to voice mail inquires which often contain a request for information that is contained on this web site and in print with each hard copy application available at our facility.
I respectfully request that you assist us with using our resources efficiently by taking the time to get your questions answered by the web site, from our hard copy application and its cover documents that are available at our front desk for those without internet access, and by email. I am able to respond to email seven days a week, several times a day from home. I would be glad to answer any questions that may be generated by your review of our information or respond to requests regarding time-sensitive deadlines communicated via email. I thank you for helping us to use our resources efficienty and serve our mission with volunteering.
Adult Opportunities & Application
Youth Opportunities & Application
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