My Experience with Do Something's Pics for Pets Campaign

Hi! My name is Alycia and I am a member of DoSomething.org 's Youth Advisory Council. Members are comprised of young people with a sincere passion for bettering their community in countless ways. If there is a way to support and help your local community, a Do Something member is either heading it up, involved in, or will start in the future. 

On their latest project, one of the leaders of the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) instituted a project called "Pics for Pets". This involves taking pictures of shelter animals of any kind (from mice to dogs) and promoting them through a mobile app. 

When I read about this wonderful opportunity, I jumped on it and started taking pictures right away. I have been volunteering at my local shelter for over four years, and I have fostered animals through them for the same amount of time, so I have a great relationship with the shelter. They are always looking for new and innovative ways to promote their animals so when I brought this to their attention, they barked with excitement and assisted me in getting pictures and information on animals that I was not familiar with.

The next step in getting these animals the publicity they deserve was keeping in touch with the leader of this project. After that, I uploaded all of the information and pictures, and the project was complete, at least on my tail.  

Even though I had sent in all the information necessary for my shelter's animals to be featured in the application, the head of the campaign was hard at work preparing the app and making sure it was going to be a success by keeping every member informed on its status so that we could notify and get our shelter and community excited.

The launch day was finally here! Our leader emailed us to let us know the app was live and I downloaded it instantaneously. I was so proud that these animals, some of which I had spent a long amount of time with, could be viewed by simply downloading an app. 

My shelter and the leader of this project were proud of me which boosted my confidence! This experience inspired me to keep volunteering at my local shelter, with anything involving Do Something, and show the youth around me that volunteering is not as hard as they think. 

I challenge you, the reader of this post, to volunteer in any way you can. If you choose not to, be mindful that you cannot judge others when the change you want to happen never comes to be.