We were put in touch with Karen Menczer of Animal-Kind by a Quaker friend in the United States.

Karen has just visited Liberia Animal Welfare & Conservation Society (LAWCS) and writes:

“I filled up half my suitcase with books, magazines, and humane education information printed from the internet.

The work of LAWCS is impressive. It’s very much driven by the founder Morris Darbo, who is really amazing.  He was born and raised in Voinjama, and has lived there his whole life – it’s a small town, with very few opportunities and very few outsiders.

He didn’t have any role model to look to who showed kindness to animals, except possibly his father – but not really in the way we think of kindness to animals.  Morris told me that his father would bring puppies home, and inevitably, the puppies would get sick. There wasn’t then, and there isn’t now, a vet in Voinjama or in the entire County of Lofa and Morris felt sick when the puppies were sick – he felt their pain.  That is so unusual in a country where the majority don’t believe that animals feel pain, where animal welfare/protection isn’t well understood or accepted, and where people eat all animals, including dogs.

Morris is a vegetarian and has convinced several of his friends to become vegetarians – in this very meat- eating society.

The LAWCS humane education program is run in 10 schools and there are about 1000 students involved.  They would like to expand, but of course funding is a constraint.  Now, only the teachers get HE material.  There’s not enough funds to give each student an HE manual, as they do in Ghana SPCA’s HE program.

The pictures below are of Morris Darbo on the left, and Morris with his friend and fellow LAWCS volunteer, Abraham.”

Animal-Kind International is a 501(c)(3) charity based in the US. It supports 11 animal welfare organizations around the world, and sends 100% of all donations to their animal welfare partner organizations: Ghana, Lilongwe, and Uganda SPCAs, Tanzania Animal Welfare Society, Namibia’s rural SPCAs, South Sudan humane educators, Bosnia Animal Foundation, Save the Animals-Armenia, Helping Hands for Hounds of Honduras, and Kingston (Jamaica) Community Animal Welfare.

AKI ensures that all donations are used for animal welfare purposes only.  We do the due diligence so supporters can be assured their donations are used wisely, to help the animals that need help the most.

Although Liberia Animal Welfare & Conservation Society is not an AKI partner organization, during AKI Director Karen’s recent visit to Liberia and LAWCS, she was so impressed with their work, AKI will gladly accept donations of humane education materials and monetary donations and will ensure they are tracked just as they do with donations to their partner organizations.

You can read more at www.animal-kind.org.