This week, Lost Paws is looking to bring attention to Kingston’s homeless furry friends.
Lost Paws is a student-run club and one of 14 committees under ASUS’s community outreach portfolio, providing volunteers, donations and increased awareness to local charities.
This week Lost Paws is focusing on awareness with its bi-annual Awareness Week, running from Nov. 13-15 from 1-5 p.m. in the Queen’s Centre.
The events will culminate with a pizza sale on Nov. 15 outside The Underground.
The theme of this semester’s Awareness Week is fostering and adopting animals. Kaila Elders, co-chair of Lost Paws, explained that fostering is a popular option for students.
“[Fostering is] something a lot of students are interested in, just because it’s a really easy option for students because it’s not a long-term commitment to a pet, which is a big reason a lot of students aren’t wanting to commit to a pet right now, because they don’t know where they’re going to be in the future,” Elders said.
Each week, there are 10 teams of Lost Paws volunteers that visit the Humane Society, totaling 40-50 volunteers.
“When volunteers go out there, they play with the dogs, cuddle the cats, just basically get the animals out there more comfortable with the Humane Society, make them feel more at home,” Leah Combs, co-chair of Lost Paws, said.
Fostering is also of interest to students due to the Humane Society covering the basic costs of animal caretaking.
“The only thing [students] have to do is transportation and Lost Paws is totally willing to help out with that if anyone approaches us,” Elders said.
This week’s events include a cutest pet contest, bake sale and pizza sale.
“People can submit their pets on Facebook and then we have a Facebook album people can ‘like’,” Elders said. “The top five pets get featured in our Awareness Week.”
The bake sale will occur alongside the contest, and candy and glowsticks will also be sold at Friday evening’s pizza sale at The Underground.
Last year, Lost Paws raised $3,000 through fundraising efforts such as Awareness Week. This year, they aim to meet or exceed this amount.
Combs said there are many ways for students to get involved in this effort.
“People can support the Kingston Humane Society right here on campus with Lost Paws. So even just buying a cupcake from us at a stand is making a difference,” Combs said.
Lisa Liu, community outreach commissioner at ASUS, oversees these committees and was last year’s co-chair for Lost Paws.
“Because Lost Paws is under community outreach with the other 14 committees, they all reach out to Kingston charities,” Liu said.
“We want to make sure that Queen’s students are giving back to Kingston and vice versa, just so we can build that connection with the city.”
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