Public Service Announcement

Each semester we try to have the Critter Club kids do some kind of a project.  Critter Club is a program at HAWS for middle school students that helps them get involved in HAWS through educational meetings on Thursday evenings, and volunteer work on the weekends.

This semester I decided to have them create video Public Service Announcements, which meant I had to do some research on them myself.  PSAs are advertising to the public with the goal of raising awareness, or changing behavior or attitudes towards a social issues.  It is not advertising a product or promoting a company or organizations.

I also learned about what goes into a good ad and passed this information onto the club members.  A good PSA is 30 to 60 seconds in length, usually has a tag line, and narrows it's focus onto one simple concept.  A PSA that gives out too much information is one that isn't going to be remembered.

I also showed the kids some videos of both PSAs and regular commercials.  It was a great trip down memory lane to show the PSA with the Native American Indian crying over pollution and the frying egg showing what your brain on drugs looks like.  The commercials I showed were more current and I was able to point out the short duration of shots within a given commercial -- nowadays individual shots last about 2-3 seconds at the most.  Apparently modern viewers have a really short attention span!

The kids broke up into 5 groups, chose their topics, wrote scripts and created story boards.  Then they got to work shooting video, and went through the process of editing it.  Two of the groups finished their PSAs last night and those are displayed here.  I'll post the other three when they're done.

Five Things You Probably Never Knew about Animal Shelters

1) Animal Shelters are individual organizations; there isn't an umbrella organization that creates policy or that a shelter has to answer to.  

 "We adopted him from your _______ location."  At HAWS we hear things like this all the time. 
People are often amazed when we tell them that HAWS is our own organization and we aren't affiliated with other shelters. 

While some shelters have a variety of campuses within a general area, there is no national organization that oversees all of us.  And while we may occasionally work with other shelters on projects, exchange ideas with one another, and sometimes transfer animals, we aren't the same organization at all. 


2) Shelters can be government run or a private non-profit. 

It seems to be a common perception that animal shelters are government run entities that are run off of a tax base.  While some shelters are (usually called "animal control" facilities), many shelters are not.  It really depends on the specific facility.

HAWS is a non-profit organization that is run by a member elected board of directors.  The majority of our funds are obtained through donations and fundraising efforts.  The only money we get from the tax base is by contracting out our services  to many Waukesha County municipalities to handle such things as stray animals and holding animals that have been confiscated from their owners through allegations of neglect or abuse. 


3) Shelters don't necessarily have any authority to investigate neglect or abuse cases. 

 An animal control officer or humane officer is the person, besides a police officer, who would investigate allegations of neglect or abuse to an animal.  These are people who have been specifically trained to know the law as it pertains to animal welfare, and are trained in animal care and behavior.   They are also endowed with legal authority to conduct investigations, issue citations and file charges.

Because HAWS is a privately run non-profit we are not a government agency.  The people who investigate neglect and abuse cases in Waukesha County are Humane Officers employed by the county.  HAWS works closely with these officers since we're a holding facility for animals removed from homes through legal action, and also a bite case quarantine facility.  But if we get calls from people wanting to report neglect or abuse of animals in the community we refer them to Waukesha County. 


4) Not all shelters take in stray animals. 

Government run shelters will take in strays since as an animal control facility that is a large part of their purpose.  Non-profit animal shelters vary depending on their policies and the contracts they may have with area municipalities.

Shelters that chose to be what's called in the animal welfare industry "Limited Intake", take in only those animals that they have space for and that they feel they can place.  They usually don't offer stray services because to do so could mean that their intake would exceed what they're capable of housing.

The policy of an open admission shelter is to take in any unwanted animal from their community no matter how adoptable or unadoptable it is, what physical condition it is in, or how friendly or aggressive it may be.  HAWS is  run as an "Open Admission" shelter and part of our mission is to provide stray services to municipalities that want to contract with us.




5) Some shelters only take in dogs and cats, others take in a variety of animals.  

HAWS is lucky to have the space and resources to be a truly open admission shelter and we take in just about anything that can be kept as a pet.  We always have rabbits, and almost always have guinea pigs.  Additionally many times you can find birds, small rodents and reptiles at HAWS looking for their forever home!