
22/03/2025
Today is the 12th anniversary of the rescue! This is the day we rescued Blair, our first major dog case, and I realized this work was vital and we needed to organize something official. That’s when we put up our first page for Vietnam Animal Welfare Organization that later became Vietnam Animal Aid and Rescue.
We had lofty goals in the beginning to make real change for animals in Vietnam and looking back, I see how naive I was then. Societal change is HARD and is best achieved by local people, not international organizations. We thought we could save everyone and we answered every call for help, but quickly we realized we were overrun with cases and didn’t have the space, the money, the help, and especially not the vets capable of handing such a caseload. Those limits still haven’t changed much in 12 long years.
The beginning years were fuelled by passion and mania and lots of caffeine and quickly led to burnout. Over the years, I’ve had to recognize what we are capable of and what we are not and how compassion alone sadly still doesn’t pay the bills.
We have made many mistakes and had many failures, but we helped hundreds, if not thousands, of animals over the years. We have saved many and lost many, some adopted, many living out their lives with us as part of our rescue family. We’ve had over 150 people help us in this mission as volunteers and staff and they’ve all been a valuable part of this journey. We had a vet clinic for 3 years and did incredible work for the community during that time.
Thousands of kind strangers from around the world have funded this mission and to them we are incredibly grateful. None of this is possible without them.
We recently took on the massive mission to also help wildlife, a project which will take a big effort from new staff to get running, but it will do groundbreaking work for underserved species.
We look forward to the next chapter of our mission and to serving many thousands more animals in this country. Thank you for being part of this incredible mission!