Organization Overview & Purpose: People Promoting Animal Welfare (PPAW) is a 501c(3) non-profit organization with the exempt purpose of operating a low-cost spay/neuter clinic for dogs and cats. Our clients primarily reside in a 3 counties of East Tennessee area (Blount, Loudon and Monroe counties), but we have had clients from 14 other Tennessee counties and three other states. The PPAW Spay/Neuter Clinic was started in late 1998, and we have sterilized over 38,000 companion animals to date. Our mission is to reduce the number of unwanted dogs, cats, kittens and puppies in our area of East Tennessee and thus reduce the number of deaths at area shelters. We have had a warm and wonderful reception from the public and have proven that low-income families DO want to do the right thing, but until our clinic came along, they frequently could not afford to. The human-animal bond is such an important relationship to foster and helps children learn caring and compassion that will take them into productive adulthood. Our clinic helps foster that caring and compassion by providing teaching materials ... and also, teaching by example. In these times of financial constraints, we are seeing more and more people with NO money available to them to sterilize their pets, which means that more and more puppies and kittens will be surrendered to area shelters for euthansia. This can be demoralizing to these low-income families when they have no other recourse. When we have no grants available to do these animals for free, we sterilize them anyway ... digging into our resources to cover costs. This past summer, the sales of Frontline and Advantage flea products helped defray the costs of free surgeries; however, sales declined sharply in the late fall.

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