Our mission is to help end animal homelessness:
Progress Through Photography’s mission is to help create a world without animal homelessness– starting here in Arizona. Our strategy to contribute to this cause is fourfold:
- Offer free Photography services to AZ Pet shelter system
- Support select charities with monetary donations.
- Create content that helps people to be better pet parents.
- Advocate for policy reform in areas that benefit the cause we support.
What type of policies are we looking for ?
We support policies that aim to end animal homelessness through one or more of the following goals:
- Reduce the number of animals that end up in the shelter system
- Increase the number of animals leaving the shelter system through adoption.
- Make pet parenthood more affordable and inclusive.
- Improve the safety and comfort of pets.
Concretely, what policies are you talking about?
Below you can find the main 10 policies we support in an overview that shows where we believe the change can be achieved (horizontal axis) and who are most impacted (vertical axis). There are many more policy initiatives that could help and the change will most likely come city, county, state and national legislatures. Do you have any policies you want to add here ? Leave us a message in the comments below.
But, doesn’t this cost a lot of money ?
The short answer is, yes, funding is necessary to achieve some of these policy goals and the preference of where this funding comes from is subject to major political discussion. However, we need to place things into perspective.
- The estimated running cost of the pet shelter system in the USA is ~ 2 Billion Dollar. While a lot of money for private shelters comes from fundraising and adoption fees, some of this is paid by the US Tax Payer.
- According to Harvard University, pet ownership improves your mental health and productivity. This means pet ownership has obvious economic benefits.
- The Pet industry, a ~ 100 BILLION (and growing) industry in the USA will gain from more pets in households.
Therefor, we believe there is room to make political progress without having to resort to increased taxes for individuals.
What’s Next?
In the upcoming blog posts, we will go in-depth into each of these proposals, discuss the details and show some examples of policies that have worked in other states and nations. Do you want to share your ideas ? Please leave us a comment below !