#or donate to any of the other hundreds (thousands) of vetted fundraisers

[lebada]

this person is a confirmed scammer btw, who remakes a lot but look out for this profile picture bc they reuse it a lot

also look out for:

scammer claiming the money will be used to evacuate multiple people from gaza but the fundraiser goal is way too small, like hundreds or a couple thousand dollars

paypal instead of gfm does not immediately mean scam but it makes the blog suspicious because paypal hasn't been working in gaza for a while now. the paypal money pool fundraisers also hide the location of the organiser

scams about diabetic palestinians that often specify humalog - this is the same scammer again and again

scams that link to (often paypal) fundraisers organised by people with kenyan names or names popular in countries bordering kenya - again this is the same scammer again and again

if you want to publish an ask / donate, you can reverse image search their pictures & also copy their asks and search them into tumblr, because scammers tend to use other people's texts or reuse them from their own deactivated scam blogs

just because a blog claims to be vetted doesn't mean they are - especially when they don't mention any blog or the blog they mention is tagged but not hyperlinked (it means either the vetter has them blocked or they have the vetter blocked). please check, a lot of the vetting masterposts are easily searchable / spreadsheets

i don't want to talk about scams to discourage people from donating, but a lot of people have been mass reporting any ask they get & i think that's way way more harmful, which is why it's way better to know the signs of scams so you can automatically eliminate them before spending effort to check if the rest are real. scammers are not the unstoppable boogeyman, they're often fairly easy to spot, which is why there is really no excuse to blanket-accuse all palestinian tumblr accounts of being scammers. anyways i'm not an expert on scams or anything, this is just like half an hour's worth of research on my part, but i'm going to be using these takeaways in the future to vet my own asks so i thought it might be useful. people like @neechees @kyra45 and @anonthescambuster are doing the actual valuable work of teaching everyone all these things & putting together lists of confirmed scammers. u can also go to their blogs to search up any url u think might be a scam, or to just learn more abt scam busting

[palms-upturned]

Call me Meg, any pronouns.

I’m a white usamerican and do not speak Arabic, I do not verify fundraisers. A lot of folks in Gaza have reached out to me recently asking to share their campaigns, and so I’m trying my best to honor their requests and confirm the ones that have been vetted. My following isn’t exactly huge, but the friends I’ve made here have been extremely kind and generous in helping me when I’ve been in dire financial straits and I hope that they will extend the same generosity to the people of Gaza 💙

I’ve been talking daily with @lailashaqoura for a while and so it would especially mean a lot to me if my followers would follow her account and donate to/share her campaign:

If you’re a liberal who wants to send me an ask or respond to my posts about voting blue or Zionism or something to “debate” me, I’m not going to bother responding unless you attach a receipt for a donation to Laila’s campaign or I’m blocking you immediately. Add an image description to your receipt also. I’m not kidding.

Other fundraisers

Here’s a running list of verified users in Gaza who have reached out to me on my side blog, @vetted-gaza-funds!

Other tags on this blog where you can find fundraisers:

My general Palestine tag

My “asks” tag (this is where you’ll find the fundraisers of people who have reached out to me personally, I always try to link to verification from trusted users so that people won’t feel hesitant to reblog)

My donation match tag (this is where I post who I’m donating to every payday and encourage ppl to match my donations)

Palestinian users who are verifying campaigns (that I’m aware of):

el-shab-hussein

nabulsi

90-ghost

Other Palestinian users whose judgment I trust (but afaik they’re not personally verifying campaigns so do not ask them to do so):

fairuzfan

ibtisams

fallahifag

palipunk

Note: please interact respectfully with these users. They are doing these verifications and communicating with literally hundreds if not thousands of people in Gaza on a volunteer basis, in spite of literally deadly levels of stress. If you come from my blog and are even slightly disrespectful to anyone on this list I will hit you with a car.

Master lists of other vetted campaigns:

el-shab-hussein’s master list of master lists

fallahifag’s daily donation lists

google spreadsheet created by nabulsi/el-shab-hussein

Other sites where you can find verified funds:

gazafunds.com

Operation Olive Branch

Strawberry Seed Collective

Other:

A list of users who have reached out to me but who I could not find verification for. If anyone has any kind of link to a verification of these users please let me know so I can add them to my list!

If you want to send a campaign my way to add to my list on behalf of someone else, some things that would be helpful to me:

Please keep in mind that I cannot share fundraisers that have not been verified in some way. I am not Palestinian nor an Arabic speaker and have no way of verifying for myself what is or isn’t legitimate. If you send me an unvetted fundraiser, I will do my best to search regularly to see if anyone has vetted it in the future and share later if so, but that’s the best I can do.

If it has been verified but is not included in this spreadsheet, a link to the verification would be massively helpful.

If it’s a campaign that is on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet, please let me know where on the spreadsheet I can find it

If it’s from gazafunds.com, please show me a screenshot and/or a link where I can see the campaign featured on the website

[matan4il]

I don’t know if you or anyone can really answer this accurately, but are GoFundMes for people living in Gaza trustworthy at all? or even trustworthy on a case by case basis? a musician I like (Maisie Peters) shared several today, with “help (these families) move out of Rafah,” and it gave me pause because I wholly believe in helping people who need it, but how can we possibly know if that contribution will go to the worthwhile places and families who need it? so much aid is being stolen by Hamas and UNRWA even still, and I have no idea how well researched any of those individual fundraisers are. I’m sure people mean well but it seems like there must be a more reliable option?

Hi Nonnie!

You're so right to be doubtful. Every humanitarian crisis brings with it a bunch of scams, but when we talk about a situation where there can be terrorists getting the aid, I think being cautious with people asking for money is extra justified. I'm glad you already know about the theft of humanitarian aid in Gaza, and are being careful.

First, I will say that the ones setting money to get people out of Gaza completely are very suspect to me. Especially now. Egypt has not only been extremely reluctant to take in refugees from Gaza, even on a temporary basis (for historic reason I won't get into, and which have little to do with "preventing ethnic cleansing"), they've doubled down on closing their border with Gaza to the point of not even allowing humanitarian aid in through their border anymore. Even before this recent development, they were only allowing in medical cases. We do know some people, related to Hamas, got out of Gaza, likely by pretending to be a medical case. This would suggest that maybe, up until the recent Egyptian crackdown, there was a way to bribe some Egyptian personnel to look the other way, and pretend regular people were medical cases, but it would take substantial amounts of money, and would be limited in how many could actually get through that way. In essence, you had no way of knowing who legitimately would take your money and use it to get out of Gaza, and who would just take your money, and do with it God only knows what. At best, just keep it to themselves, at worst use it for terrorist purposes. There is NO WAY for people outside the region to be able to check how the money will be used, or if any of the claims made by a campaign runner are legit, so anyone telling you, "This is safe, it's been vetted!" is either fooling you, or is being fooled themselves.

Inside Gaza, people don't actually need money to get out of Rafah. They can just... move out. Israel has already set up an improvised shelter city within walking distance from Rafah, it also already allows evacuation to other safe parts of south Gaza, and we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already moved out of Rafah and away from the zones designated for military action. And this costs nothing. Especially with humanitarian aid being poured non-stop into Gaza, including temporary shelters. Are those great? No. But if the goal is to get out of Rafah, it's possible to do that without paying a dime.

Bottom line, I'm not saying every fundraising campaign is untrustworthy, I'm saying that there is no way to know which one is and which one isn't, and that I personally wouldn't donate to any, because I wouldn't want my money to go to terrorist activities no matter what, and when I know that people do have alternatives and can get by, even if they don't get my donations, I'd rather be safe than sorry, meaning having to live with the possibility that my money directly got someone murdered.

I hope this helps! Take care! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[latlqt]

Hello, today I am asking you to-

Help Nour and his family!

Please remember their lives!!

have you ever been afraid that someone would kill you just for being alive?

Nour is a 32-year-old man from Gaza who lives in a tent along with two children which include a young baby.

How much must people beg to be deserving of their lives? When every thing has been taken away from you, when death surrounds you at every corner, how frightened would you be?

The winter is bitter and cold, but you can help by donating, even 5 dollars will help!

VETTED BY ASSOCIATION

Do not give up your hope!

Nour's current Tumblr account is @noor509

I know have probably seen hundreds, if not thousands of posts asking for help,

This is how people live every day in Gaza, every waking moment filled with terror and sorrow, please, help him and his family to safety!

I will never hold any contempt towards those who cannot donate. I understand you may be afraid, everyone is afraid. This is why we must always help others, we have all been afraid at one point in our lives.

Share the word! You must not forget anybody! Do not feel guilt, but do feel empathy.

Here I am tagging people, I do apologize, but please do share!

@olowan-waphiya @loveaankilaq @2spirit-0spoons @natstky @kayeuh @todaysbird @tsalagitsulasgi @ahasiw-okitowin

[divisionofboy]

Hi everyone! Please keep reading or at least reblog this post!!!! My cat needs help. My cat has a unique medical issue and none of the vets he has seen can discern the cause or solution. I was told my cat is very healthy for his age and that he could live another 5-6 more years!

He is unable to pee on his own and seemingly has no feeling in his bladder. He is not in pain or suffering but does have to get his bladder drained every other day! If he doesn't his bladder could rupture and he could die.

Toulouse is so full of life still. He is eating, playing, cuddling, and doing all the things he normally does. He loves to rub against his dog sister and play with his catnip toys. He really enjoys watching the birds and squirrels outside too. This cat is my best friend and we sleep side by side every single night. Keeping his bladder empty is costing me hundreds of dollars a week.

Since these issues started my partner and I have spent over 5k which wiped our savings completely. We have no money for Christmas and my partner had to cancel seeing his family this year because of the costs and frequent vet visits.

We have been told Toulouse may benefit from a surgery but it's going to be thousands more dollars that we just do not have, and none of the places will give us any sort of payment plan. We have already applied for care credit and maxed out the card on his other vet visits. We're thousands in debt over this and really need support.

It has been so frustrating that none of the vets will let us do a payment plan. My cat's quality of life is still good and it makes no sense to put him down over a lack of funding. Please donate if you can and share this post wherever you can.

There are medical reports on the gofundme for proof and if you have questions please dm me.

[scribblingface]

I made a post yesterday talking about scam donation requests and then deleted because I felt bad that my post might be interpreted as 'since there are scammers out there, don't donate to palestinian gofundmes', which wasn't what I was trying to say. but what caused me to want to talk about this was seeing posts that are heavily guilt tripping people for reporting accounts that look like scams, and advocating for automatically publishing all asks claiming to be from palestinians requesting funds. and a lot of people are reblogging those guilt trip posts, because they're effective guilt trips! and the reason I'm trying again to post about it today is because I just saw a gofundme that I am 100% sure is scam, where the 'before the war' photos are stock photos and the 'after' ones are generic shots of rubble that you can get off of google, and it had raised over 40k.

scammers exist. scams specifically surge in number when there are natural disasters, wars, etc. to try to take advantage of everyone's desire to help. most of those unsolicited asks are scams, period.

I don't generally advocate for donating to big organizations instead of individuals asking for help, but if you do not know with reasonable certainty that a request for donations is legit, don't donate to it; take the time to find one that IS legit, either another gofundme or a legitimate charity.

there are a LOT of posts claiming to be vetted, but if you look, you'll see that the account 'vetting' them is an account that only posts other fundraisers, no ordinary posts, and that they never say HOW they vet these fundraisers. scammers have clearly seen that all it takes is adding 'vetted!' in a reblog from another account and people will share it. this is not what 'vetting' means. personally I would stick to gofundmes where real, longstanding accounts that post about other things have attested to knowing the person gathering funds.

(I also see a lot of 'I spoke to them in DMs, they're legit' and I just want to post that image that's like 'do you think someone would really do that? just go on the internet and lie?' real human people run scams, and they can speak to you in DMs)

people should take the time to look closely at a fundraiser, see who posted the gofundme (are they running tons of other ones too?), see if the names of the individuals the money is being raised for are also attached to other gofundmes, look closely at the photos to see if any are stock photos or ai generated or photos of different people all labeled as being photos of the same person, check if the people claiming they vetted it only mass vet other fundraisers and nothing else...and if all of that takes too much time or you still have no idea if it's legit, just donate to an aid organization that you can be sure of instead.

I still feel bad posting this because I don't want to discourage people from donating to palestinians in need, but pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have gone to help real palestinians into scams instead is bad. and advocating for behaviours that lead to people doing this is also bad!

[shoresoftheshadowlands]

This is a scam btw, they have no way to use gofundme. This is not a real vetted donation post, but at this point I feel like I'm pissing in the wind trying to let people know that any of these ask scam bots are scanning the notes for names so they can spam more inboxes with fake donation campaigns. There are real people in Gaza who need real help but this thread IS a scam. The original asker is a bot. I've recorded hundreds of similar ones in my ask inbox. The text is AI generated, and made to make people feel bad enough to post or go to the bots blog to reblog whatever post they say to. I have a note on my blog that says don't send me asks for donations because I'll report them as a bot and it has not even slightly slowed down how many I get. They SPAM my inbox relentlessly all day. I'm begging you people to pay attention to clear and obvious fakes.

I know people probably think I'm a monster and a horrible asshole to point this out but I'm, like others, am getting so sick of this.

This is FRAUD.

(Linked post above copied text below) if i see another gofundme using pictures of dead syrians to steal money from both living and dead palestinians i am going to like actually kill all of you i don't understand how to say this in a way that gets through people's heads: GOFUNDME DOES NOT FUNCTION IN GAZA. Gofundmes on behalf of Gazans can be run, certainly, but there is a rule in the gfm terms of service that the fundraiser has to state multiple times who is running said gfm on BEHALF OF the person in the country with no gfm access and none of these campaigns ever say that. They all say in the text that they're a person currently in Gaza who needs an astronomical sum right now and then at the bottom it says "This GFM is run by [name] from Winter Park, Florida" or from a shitty little town in east Germany or from someplace in Serbia. Unless a gofundme is upfront in saying "I am in Maryland right now and I am running this campaign on behalf of my cousins in Rafah and I am going to transfer any withdrawn monies to them via WorldRemit," it is a scam. "but they linked an instagram/twitter" and then the instagram is either filled with AI art or hasn't been used in months meaning they either bought it or the person linking to it isn't connected to it, is just using a dead account for clicks. you can buy instagram and facebook accounts for $20, that is not a large investment to make when these scam campaigns are bringing in tens of thousands of dollars that is besides the fact that all of these posts are formatted in the exact same way and use the exact same syntax and that, again, many of them use pictures of dead Syrians. I have found at least three pictures from BBC articles on the Syrian Civil War in gofundmes that are claimed to be pictures of the gfm runner's children Please for the love of god instead donate to places that are vetted charities that can actually operate in Gaza. Nonexhaustive list: wck unicef anera

This is part of why I have been practically yelling from the rooftops that all those asks in our inboxes are 100% scams. They are bots, and often use ai text to fill out the text body. Worse? They scan the notes of other posts talking about any disasters but primarily the war in Gaza. I know this is true now beyond all doubt because so much as interacting with one of those posts regardless of context (Such as letting people know it is a scam in the notes) will garner dozens and dozens of these asks in a period of anywhere from SECONDS (Literally!) to minutes, they come in droves! I had over 18 in two hours last week following 1 single reblog of a real vetted post.

I've also been saving screenshots of every single one of those asks, and they cycle through avatars and names. Sometimes you catch them early before they change their names and its just three word randomizer names that suddenly change to NAME-Family-NUMBER, in which the number signifies which generation of bot this is. I get flooded with so many I've seen them go from -Family-(no number) to 7, with the same front name and avatar.

I have archived probably over a hundred of them by now and it is really interesting how many of the names of fake people are the same. I don't know how common some of these names are in Gaza or the region in general, but it feels to me that they pick the most common name someone might reasonably believe.

They will trick you. They will say they are vetted, even vetted by legitimate sources and have ID's you could check, and sometimes they appear there, but that's because they copied those entries and are false, or else, managed to trick the vetting process.

The first thing I did when I started getting flooded by these Ask Scams is add a line to my blog header message that I block and report all asks for donations, and to not send them. Didn't even cause a pause in how many I got every day! Not one message acknowledged the note at all like a real person might. Flag, report, and block these asks without fear friends, they are not real, you are not turning away real people, only liars and scummy bots run by the worst shitstains around, who would steal using the face of the dead and suffering.

Please stop ✋🚨 you're the only hope to save a child🥺

My name is Esraa mones, and I am a mother of two young children. One of them, under the age of five, urgently needs milk, while the other requires treatment for skin diseases.

Please donate and/or replog 🥺🙏🇵🇸

I live in a tent on muddy ground, surrounded by many insects😭.

Please donate and/or replog 🥺🙏🇵🇸

Please consider donating. If you can't, a simple reblog of my page's content can make a difference.

I ASK ALL OF YOU TO HELP MY FAMILY AND DONATE IN THE LINK PLEASE🍉

Vetted by @gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #64 )🍉🇵🇸

@90-ghost @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2

@fairuzfakhira @vakarians-babe @sarakipin @fairuzfakhira @a-n-e-m-o-n-a-blog @13eyond-13oring @still--getting--there @babyanimalgifs @just-shower-thoughts @sar-soor @staff @appsa @akaknorma-blog @apagou @faeyrin @mitarbeiter @el-shab-hussein @vivisectionv @tortiefrancis @flower-tea @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @vivisection-of-a-surgeon-comic @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @animentality @kordeliiius @kordeliiius -international @brutaliakent @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @the-bastards-of-the-barrel @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural

[floridensis]

hypothetical but if i were to post a fundraiser for medical bills for an injured neglected rabbit do you think anyone would donate

i found the rabbit on my front yard with a twisted foot and i carried it back to the house who ostensibly "owns" them but i cant help but think ive made a terrible mistake by returning it

i dont think they even have any cage or carrier and i let them keep the tub i carried it with

their rabbits keep escaping and everyone keeps notifying them out of concern but nothing changes. this rabbit and two others have been living in my yard for weeks wt this point and nothing is done about it. i know this injury is recent because god knows i see more of these rabbits than their "owners" do

im going to give them my rabbits vets number and hope they see a vet but im not optimistic and might ask to take it even though i really do not want a second rabbit. im allergic and my senior rabbit does NOT want other rabbits

but i dont think i can surrender to the county shelter if its in bad health

im going to email the county shelter and ask them what to do...... i dont know what to do

but do you think if im looking at hundreds to thousands of dollars in vet bills for an animal that is not mine, is there any possibility i could try to monetize my small follower base here or would it just be pitiful

im really stressed about this little guy i dont know what to do i dont know if i can even do anything since i gave him back

[slushyseals]

why do we have to be careful with the spca?

There are a lot of organizations that claim to be charities that are just all around bad news. If you want to donate to a good cause here are couple tips to help you make sure it will go toward something good and not a scam.• Research before you donate. Put the charity’s name followed by “scam” and see what comes up in an internet search! • Donate to smaller charities. Big charities may be more well known- and that’s why your donation can mean a whole lot more to a smaller charity- for them it may be a bucket of water to help put out the fire, while that same donation is just a few drops in a much larger bucket to a larger charity.• Donate to local charities. You have a better chance of seeing the result of your donation this way- heck, if it’s a cause you care about you may even donate some of your time, and see first hand how funds are used (or misused). 

Unfortunately, a lot of well known charities are also not the best. Below is what I’ve found in my own research, but encourage everyone to do their own. Info I’ve found myself on why the ASPCA , SPCA International, Susan G Koman, PETA, and the Salvation Army aren’t ones I personally want to support and put it under the cut as the text is quite long. This just scrapes the surface for many of these well known organizations.

The ASPCA is not your local pet shelter. It is more concerned about profit- and funding commercials that guilt people into donating money to them.

Bob Baker, a former ASPCA investigator, told The New York Times, “show one picture of a mistreated dog and the funds would pour in… [I]t got to the point where animal welfare was not the priority, fund-raising was. It felt as though the animals were being used for fundraising, rather than using funds raised to help the animals.”

Despite having $115 million in contributions in 2013, the ASPCA only found homes for 3,400 dogs and cats, according to its annual report. That’s a cost of $34,000 per animal adopted.

Despite its name the ASPCA is not affiliated with local SPCAs and gives little of its money to them. In 2013, the ASPCA only gave $4.9 million to support animal shelters, a mere 4% of its $129 million budget.  In 2011, the State Humane Association of California (SHAC) filed a complaint with the California Attorney General about the ASPCA’s fundraising. SHAC argued that “ASPCA’s unfair and deceptive fundraising practices harm local humane societies and SPCAs by capitalizing on and reinforcing the widely-held mistaken belief that the ASPCA is a parent or umbrella organization to the thousands of humane societies and SPCAs across the country.” SPCA International misuses its funds- For example, $8 million dollars meant to save Hurricane Katrina pets stranded by the storm had no evidence of ANY animals being saved.

There are other SPCAs that are unrelated to this- research them! There’s a lot more than the scope of this post can encompass. If they’re local- check them out! Not all animal rescues are fraudsters.Susan G. Koman foundation (named after a woman who died of cancer, run by her sister Nancy Brinker)  SUES smaller charities that use “for the cure”. Susan Koman is for profit, not for helping people- rather than donating to help survivors, or screening, instead several hundred thousand a year just goes right in Nancy’s pocket. Taking the donations of people for a $411,000 salary for herself seems like a misuse of funds. It’s been reported that only 15% of donations go toward finding a cure.

I could write a whole post about how awful PETA is, how they misuse funds, and many of their shock videos they claim “expose” abuse they created themselves- sometimes with computer generated animals, sometimes bribing/forcing people into abusing the animals to record it. They also took healthy pets from vets who nursed the rescues back to health (puppies and kittens) and claimed they’d rehome them, but killed them and left them in dumpsters. They target low-income families and try to take their pets, saying any lie they think will make them give up the pet, believing it will go to a better home and richer family- only to have it killed immediately once it is in PETA’s possession. 

The Salvation Army, I’m not denying they’ve done good to help people, but they’ve also done a lot of bad things too. This organization is run by a church and having that dictate its beliefs- anti LGBT+ with a long history of abusing people who fall into this category, including leaving a woman (Jennifer Gale) to freeze to death outside one of their shelters. Abuse is not limited to LGBT+ in the Salvation Army’s shelters; occupants are regularly treated poorly by staff on power trips. Here’s some additional history on their anti LGBT+ stances (which they seem to deny?)

[settiai]

(https://www.gofundme.com/garrus-vet-bills)

Vet Bills + Ongoing Costs

Due to several trips to the emergency  animal hospital earlier this year for a blocked urinary tract, my cat Garrus (the black one in the posted picture) has racked up a vet bill of just shy of $5000 at the emergency clinic and almost another $1000 for additional tests/medication/check-ups in the aftermath. He's also going to be on prescription food for the rest of his life and needs semi-regular tests done for the next six months to a year to make certain the prescription is doing its job to prevent a blockage from happening again, which are ongoing costs on top of that. I've already gotten several donations on YouCaring to put towards the vet bills themselves, but I'm still several thousand dollars shy of paying them off.  Since that site has now been folded into GoFundMe and has gone offline, I'm creating an ongoing fundraiser on GoFundMe instead. On top of that one of my other cats, Percy (the grey striped cat in the picture), needs to have a few teeth extracted in the near future which is going to be another $800+. Considering I'm still trying to pay off Garrus's bills, there is no possible way for me to find that money to cover Percy's procedure without help. I've managed to get a temporary line of credit to cover the emergency vet costs themselves, but those bills need to be paid off by November so that they don't start charging me exorbitant fees on top of what I already owe, and my finances very much aren't at a place where I'll be able to do that on my own. Especially with the additional money that I'm going to be spending for prescriptions, check-ups, and the like,  which will be several hundred dollars every month for the foreseeable future. And the odds of them giving me more credit to also cover Percy's teeth extraction are very slim, considering the state of my finances and how much trouble I'm having getting the money together to make monthly payments on what I already owe. At this time, I'm about $3500 from covering all of the bills that have already been racked up for Garrus. Add in the $800-1000 estimate that the vet has given me for Percy's upcoming procedure and the ongoing monthly costs of Garrus's prescription food/semi-regular tests, and that's where my current goal of $5000 has come from. Any help people can give will be greatly appreciated. My cats mean the world to me, and all of us are extremely thankful for any help people can give us. Thank you!                    

[endenogatai]

Rolling updates on Beirut, a city and a tech community devastated

It was only relatively recently, in October 2018, that TechCrunch held Startup Battlefield MENA to unpack startups in the Middle East and North Africa. When TechCrunch went looking for a city in the region to host the event in, it quickly became clear that Beirut was the one for us. Vibrant, full of creative entrepreneurs, and a fantastic startup scene made it a natural TechCrunch choice.

That year Beirut came into its own as tech cluster, with the ongoing emergence of the Beirut Digital District, Antwork and similar initiatives and spaces in the city.

Beirut has created many stand-out startups including Instabug and MYKI, as well as local VC funds including BeryTech Fund and Leap Ventures among others.

Startup Battlefield MENA was a huge success and helped shine a light on that ecosystem.

But it goes without saying that both Lebanon’s financial and political crisis last year, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, has hit Beirut very hard.

We have therefore witnessed the explosion yesterday, which devastated the city and so many lives, with enormous sadness. Our hearts go out to everyone there.

So this post will not be a traditional TechCrunch post about startups and investors.

This will be kept as a rolling list of updates and stories from the tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and investors in a city which is close to TechCrunch’s heart and will be updated as we get information, and put into sections.

Any tech founders or investors in Beirut can email me a statement about how they are doing, if they are well, how their team are doing, if their office was damaged etc. Any stories AT ALL can be sent to mike [AT] mikebutcher.me and I will assemble them for publication here. Put “Beirut” in the subject line.

URGENT NEEDS: Maps of Shelters, Initiative to Locate Victims https://ift.tt/31l4tCZ

FINANCIAL DONATIONS: You can donate to the Disaster Relief Fund, Lebanese Red Cross and others here.

Lebanese Red Cross donations should be done on desktop (not mobile as their app has some glitches).

Impact Lebanon, a non-profit organization, is a social incubator for driven Lebanese around the world and is raising a crowd-funder here.

Life Lebanon is a relief fund created by the Lebanese in Finance organization (a serious organization formed of expats mostly in UK and US)

DONATE BLOOD: To donate blood in Lebanon: https://ift.tt/3iarlMl | https://ift.tt/3fwCcOX

Vetted and reliable NGOs worth supporting: Lebanese Red Cross Offre Joie Chance Association Bank to School Arc En Ciel Bassma Sesobel

VOLUNTEERING: Offre-Joie is an organization that is very respectable and has done good work in reconstruction post-civil war, it’s now seeking volunteers and raising a relief fund here.

MEDIA / INFORMATION: The961 is one of the leading Lebanese English media/news sites and nd one of the handful of independent and non-politically backed media outlets in the country. Check their Instagram page for pictures/details of missing people by families and friends following the explosion. They are working with a couple of full stack developers from the dev community in Lebanon to develop a platform of some sort where people can submit missing people and their info. It will be set up directly on The961.com as an extension to the news site. It’s also launched a fundraiser for the Lebanese Red Cross through their NGO (legally registered in Canada).

STORIES FROM THE GROUND:

• Entrepreneur Omar Itani: “Yesterday I lost a lot, my car, my house, my phone, one of our shops. The shop was inaugurated less than three months ago, we have poured hundreds of hours of work into the shop and invested thousands and thousands of dollars. Since its opening, the shop has been doing tremendously well and became one of the city’s fashion landmarks. Today the shop is only a memory nothing remains, all vanished in a second.” Read here.

• Business Empower is a Beirut-based technology company that offers e-commerce, data analytics, security and cloud solutions for several local and multi-national companies. The business has sustained significant damage from the event. It was stablished in 2008 by founder Mouhammad Fakhoury. Fakhoury, a Syracuse University alumni and previous Software Engineer at Adobe Systems and Microsoft, who moved to Lebanon to start his own company. Thankfully no one was physically hurt, employees were working remotely due to covid-19 restrictions.

MORE UPDATES WILL FOLLOW….

(Image credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla)(Hussein Malla)

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/30s2hKS via IFTTT

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

How many Democrats are running for president? It’s not a trick question. And it’s not an easy question to answer.

Unfortunately, it’s also not a question we can really avoid. We’ll be writing about the Democratic primary for the next [checks notes] 16 months here at FiveThirtyEight, until the Democratic National Convention is held next July in Milwaukee. We’ll be making thousands of charts and graphics featuring these candidates, taping hundreds of podcast segments about them, and collecting heaps of data on their activities. While there’s some room for flexibility — I can mention Marianne Williamson’s name in passing without committing FiveThirtyEight to write a 2,000-word feature about her — we need to make a distinction between “major” candidates and everyone else for a lot of what we’re doing.

It would be nice to be extra inclusive, but that gets out of hand quickly. According to the Federal Election Commission, there were actually 209 (!) Democrats1 who had filed paperwork to run for president or form an exploratory committee as of last Friday afternoon, including luminaries such as Gidget Groendyk, Maayan Z. Zik, John Martini and Dakoda Foxx.

The Washington Post and New York Times have more modest lists of 15 Democratic candidates — but to be honest, their definition of who qualifies seems to be pretty arbitrary. For instance, Williamson, a self-help guru and best-selling author, is on both lists, but Wayne Messam — the mayor of Miramar, Florida, who this month formed a presidential exploratory committee — is not on either.

There are lots of other edge cases. What to do with entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who became Internet-famous and is now penetrating mainstream coverage of the 2020 race? What about Mike Gravel, who is an 88-year-old former U.S. senator and may be running for president — or who may just be helping some teenagers troll everybody? Then there is John Delaney, who is a former U.S. representative and has been languishing in obscurity despite having fairly traditional credentials for a presidential candidate.2 He’s been drawing a goose egg in most polls and failing to raise enough money to qualify for the debates despite having been running for president since July 2017.

For better or worse, we need a set of relatively objective standards to distinguish major from minor candidates. So we’ll be introducing one in this article and revealing which candidates do and do not qualify so far. The fact that the standards are objective doesn’t mean they’re beyond reproach — there’s subjective judgment involved in determining which objective measures to use. (The judgment comes primarily from me and Nathaniel Rakich; everyone else politely ignored us while we went through several iterations of the qualifications in FiveThirtyEight’s politics Slack channel.) But they’re at least something we can apply consistently to all the candidates.

In fact, candidates will have two paths — plus one shortcut, which I’ll explain in a moment — to qualify as major by FiveThirtyEight’s standards. (Candidates must be officially running or have formed an exploratory committee to qualify; Joe Biden may be major, but he isn’t a candidate yet.) The first path is to meet the Democratic National Committee’s standards to qualify for the presidential debates. According to the DNC’s rules, candidates can qualify via either of the following ways:

Receive at least 1 percent of the vote in national or early-state polls from at least three separate pollsters on a list prepared by the DNC.

Receive donations from at least 65,000 unique individuals, including at least 200 donors in each of 20 states.

There are a couple of complications here. One is that we don’t necessarily expect the DNC to declare which candidates have and have not qualified until we get closer to the debates, which begin in June. So we’ll be determining this for ourselves, using their standards. We’ll also be taking candidates at their word when they claim to have reached 65,000 donors, unless we have some strong reason to doubt them; the DNC will seek to vet and verify their claims, by contrast.

Also, the DNC says that it will limit at least the first couple of debates to 20 candidates; if more than 20 qualify, they’ll use some other (ambiguous) method to decide who actually gets a podium. We’ll consider candidates to be major even if the DNC runs out of room for them, however.3

To be honest, we think the DNC standards are pretty generous. Getting 65,000 people to donate to you isn’t that much — Beto O’Rourke received donations from twice that many people within his first 24 hours!4 It’s also not that hard to hit 1 percent — just 1 percent! — in a handful of polls.

Nonetheless, we also have a second path open. It requires candidates to meet at least six of the following 10 criteria:

How we’re defining “major” presidential primary candidates

Candidates must meet the DNC’s debate qualifications via fundraising or polling OR meet at least six of these 10 criteria …

How actively the candidate is running 1. Has formally begun a campaign (not merely formed an exploratory committee) 2. Is running to win (not merely to draw attention to an issue) 3. Has hired at least three full-time staffers (or equivalents) 4. Is routinely campaigning outside of their home state* What other people think of the candidate 5. Is included as a named option in at least half of polls* 6. Gets at least half as much media coverage as candidates who qualified for the debate* 7. Receives at least half as much Google search traffic as candidates who qualified for the debate* 8. Receives at least one endorsement from an endorser FiveThirtyEight is tracking The candidate’s credentials 9. Has held any public office (elected or appointed) 10. Has held a major public office (president, vice president, governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, mayor of a city of at least 300,000 people, member of a presidential Cabinet)

The criteria are applied to the trailing 30 days.

* “Routinely campaigning” means being on the road, hosting events open to the public, for at least two weeks out of the previous 30 days. Polls include all state and national polls over the previous 30 days as tracked by FiveThirtyEight; however, each polling firm is counted only once. (If a candidate is mentioned by name in any of that polling firm’s polls over the previous 30 days, he or she counts as having been included.) Media coverage is based on the number of articles at NewsLibrary.com. Google search traffic is based on topic searches — rather than verbatim search strings — in the United States.

These standards are also meant to be pretty generous. If we think of those criteria as a point system, in which candidates get a point for every one they fulfill, someone can get to 4 points just by doing the basic blocking-and-tackling of a campaign: formally launching their bid, going out on the campaign trail, hiring a few staffers and claiming (however implausibly) that they’re in it to win it rather than (as Gravel has said) merely to draw attention to a favorite cause.5 In addition, candidates who are actively running can get 1 or 2 additional points if they have been elected or appointed to public office, depending on the stature of the position. So, candidates such as Delaney, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper can qualify as major based on actively campaigning (4 points) and their credentials as elected officials (2 points) alone.

For other candidates — those who have held only minor public offices or none at all, or those who are only campaigning half-heartedly — there are four additional ways to gain points, based on whether they’re included in polls, how much media coverage they’re getting and how much they’re being searched on Google, and whether they’ve been endorsed by anyone whom FiveThirtyEight is tracking. It’s really not that hard to get to 6 points.

There’s also the shortcut I mentioned before. If we consider it almost certain that a candidate will eventually qualify under either the first or the second path, we reserve the right to designate them as major even if they haven’t technically qualified yet. For instance, if John Kerry or Stacey Abrams were to run, they might not qualify right away because it would take the various metrics some time to catch up to their (somewhat unexpected) announcements, but they would almost certainly reach them within a few weeks. So we’d consider them to be major candidates from the start.

Which candidates have qualified so far?

By our accounting, 12 people have qualified for the debates under the DNC’s rules, one of whom (Biden) isn’t actually running yet. They also qualify as major under FiveThirtyEight’s rules, therefore.

Which candidates have qualified for the debates?

Candidates who achieved at least 1 percent in three DNC-approved polls through March 24, 2019

Candidate CNN Monmouth U. Des Moines Register (Iowa) UNH (N.H.) Fox News Biden ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Sanders ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Harris ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ O’Rourke ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Warren ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Booker ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Klobuchar ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Castro ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Gillibrand ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Buttigieg ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Inslee ✓ ✓ ✓ Hickenlooper ✓ ✓ Bloomberg ✓ ✓ Brown ✓ ✓ de Blasio ✓ ✓ Yang ✓ ✓ Delaney ✓ ✓ Gabbard ✓ ✓ Kerry ✓ Bennet ✓ Holder ✓ Bullock ✓

Shaded candidates have qualified for the debates under FiveThirtyEight’s interpretation of DNC rules, including Yang, who qualified on the basis of fundraising. According to the DNC: “Qualifying polls will be limited to those sponsored by one or more of the following organizations/institutions: Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Des Moines Register, Fox News, Las Vegas Review Journal, Monmouth University, NBC News, New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), Quinnipiac University, Reuters, University of New Hampshire, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Winthrop University. Any candidate’s three qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations, or if by the same organization, must be in different geographical areas.”

Eleven of these candidates — Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Pete Buttigieg and Jay Inslee — have qualified on the basis of achieving at least 1 percent of the vote in three DNC-approved polls. A 12th candidate, Yang, has qualified by having at least 65,000 donors, according to his campaign. We reached out to various other campaigns that didn’t meet the DNC’s polling benchmark to ask whether their candidate had hit 65,000 donations, and none claimed to have done so.

However, three additional candidates qualify as major under FiveThirtyEight’s second path. Delaney, Gabbard and Hickenlooper are running full-fledged campaigns and currently or formerly held major elected offices, so they each have at least six points, enough to qualify. (They’re also been included in the majority of polls, and two of the three, Delaney and Hickenlooper, have at least one endorsement.)

Other candidates fall a little short, however:

Williamson gets four points for running a full-fledged campaign, including a busy travel schedule and a staff of 10 full-time people, but she has no points beyond that for now. She’s included in polls occasionally, but less than half the time; she has less than half the Google search traffic of most Democrats; she isn’t included in much media coverage about the campaign; and no one on our list has endorsed her yet. Nor has she held public office before. Some of these categories are close-ish, though, so it’s not a stretch to imagine her qualifying in the future, whether by meeting the DNC’s fundraising criteria or for other reasons.

Messam is not yet officially running — although he does have an exploratory committee. He also hasn’t been included in any polls and has drawn very little interest from the media (other than FiveThirtyEight!) or the public (as measured by Google searches). He has a fairly easy path to 5 points if and when he does launch a full-fledged campaign, however — including hiring a staff and traveling to events — since he gets 1 point for being an elected official (although not 2, since Miramar is not a large city). The 6th point is tricker, but getting pollsters to include him or someone to endorse him would do the trick.

It’s not clear how seriously Gravel is taking any of this, and even though he gets 2 points for being a former U.S. senator, that alone isn’t (nearly) enough. If he does decide to officially run and begins campaigning (for the time being, an exploratory committee was opened on his behalf), he’ll accumulate additional points quickly, although note that Gravel has said that he would be running to critique U.S. imperialism rather than to win, so he wouldn’t get the point that most other candidates get for being in the race to win.

Finally, for posterity’s sake, there’s the question of whether former West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda counted as a major candidate back when he was running. (He has withdrawn his bid.) By our definition, the answer is “no,” as he usually wasn’t included in polls, didn’t draw a significant amount of search traffic or media coverage, and didn’t get any endorsements, meaning that he’d have had no more than 5 points.

So how many “major” Democrats are running for president? By our definition, there are 14 major candidates so far — not counting Biden, who is not running yet — with Williamson, Messam and Gravel having a shot to achieve major status later on. There are also several candidates who, like Biden, are still considering a bid and who would fairly easily qualify as “major” if they ran, so our guess is that the Democrats will eventually meet or surpass the record-setting 17-candidate field that the Republicans had in 2016.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.

[digitalmark18-blog]

Crowdfunding sites need to be proactive in stopping medical 'quackery,' experts say

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/crowdfunding-sites-need-to-be-proactive-in-stopping-medical-quackery-experts-say/

Crowdfunding sites need to be proactive in stopping medical 'quackery,' experts say

A screen shot of the top of the home page of GoFundMe.

Crowdfunding websites, such as GoFundMe and JustGiving, are increasingly being used by people with advanced cancer and other serious illnesses to raise money for expensive, unproven treatments.

Sometimes those treatments, although experimental and therefore not covered by insurance, are supported by some scientific evidence that they might prove beneficial.

But, as an article published last week in the journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) describes in disturbing detail, many of the treatments are nothing more than quackery.

That means that patients end up spending the money they raised through crowdfunding — amounts that can total in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars — on dubious and sometimes dangerous treatments promoted by “cranks, charlatans, and conmen who prey on the vulnerable,” writes the author of the BMJ article, freelance journalist Melanie Newman.

In the article, Newman reports on the findings of a recent investigation by the Good Thinking Society, a British nonprofit that promotes evidence-based science. Its researchers identified 540-plus crowdfunding appeals from January 2012 through June 2018 that were aimed at raising money to send British patients to clinics that offer unproven or disproven alternative cancer therapies.

Those appeals raised more than $10 million, most of which was spent in clinics in other countries, particularly Germany, Mexico and the United States.

The therapies included such sham alternative cancer treatments as antineoplastons (substances originally extracted from urine) and Gerson therapy (which requires drinking massive amounts of juice drinks and  undergoing coffee enemas).

Better safeguards

Michael Marshall, the Good Thinking Society’s project director, told Newman that crowdfunding websites need to vet cancer appeals and “reject outright proposals that refer to specific drugs that have been discredited, extreme dietary regimes, intravenous vitamin C, alkaline therapy and other alternative treatments.”

“If a fundraiser is for treatment for a serious or life threatening condition such as cancer, it ought to be reviewed before it is sent live, especially if it contains terminology that raises red flags for quackery,” he added.

According to a GoFundMe spokesperson, the website is already “taking proactive steps” in the United States to figure out how to deal with the problem, Newman reports. “Ultimately, we’ll be monitoring content of this kind more closely in order to provide tailored advice,” the spokesperson told her.

JustGiving, however, is apparently taking no action. “We don’t believe we have the expertise to make a judgment on this,” its spokesperson told Newman.

A widespread phenomenon

University of Minnesota bioethicist Leigh Turner, who has published his own research on how crowdfunding campaigns are being used to fund unproven and potentially dangerous stem-cell therapies, was not surprised by any of the details in the BMJ article.

Leigh Turner

“Although I’ve looked at stem-cell treatments, it doesn’t take very much digging around to realize that people create GoFundMe and other crowdfunding pages for a whole variety” of questionable treatments, he said in an interview with MinnPost.

“It happens widely and in many countries,” he added.

The BMJ article did not emphasize, however, one of the more troubling aspects of this issue that Turner’s work has uncovered.

“Sometimes the companies themselves are quite involved in pushing the idea of creating the crowdfunding sites,” he explained. “It’s not always something that patients come up with on their own.”

It can be quite difficult for patients and their families and friends to distinguish between legitimate clinics that are offering experimental treatments with scientific-based promise and bogus clinics that that are peddling medical scams.

The confusion is understandable, for bogus clinics often mimic the language of legitimate researchers to make their treatments sound rooted in science. They may claim, for example, that the patient will be part of a “clinical trial.”

“If it’s being advertised as a clinical study, people should ask if the study has been reviewed by [an institutional] review board,” Turner stressed.

Crucial questions

“There are a lot of other questions people can ask,” he added. “What exactly is the evidence, the science behind what is being promoted? Is it a reputable facility?”

If a doctor is involved, people can check to see if any professional disciplinary action has been taken against him or her.

Another important check is to make sure any data provided by the clinic on the treatment’s efficacy has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

As Newman points out in her BMJ article, “alternative centres do not usually publish data on treatment efficacy but instead provide testimonials, in which patients often describe being given a short time to live before starting the treatment that ‘saved’ them.”

“What’s ultimately never conveyed is that the person died around the time you would have expected them to die, and there’s no reason to think that their lives were extended,” said Turner.

A need for hope

Turner understands why people donate to crowdfunding appeals for experimental treatments. “They want to be good family members, good friends,” he said.

And for some seriously ill patients  — and their family and friends — “it seems that the most important thing that they need and want is a sense of hope,” he added.

But disreputable doctors and others prey on that need for hope, taking financial advantage of people when they are most vulnerable.

In the BMJ article, one man acknowledges that his wife’s alternative treatment for advanced colon cancer at a questionable clinic cost more than $500,000, much of which the family raised through crowdfunding appeals.

The man believes the treatment bought his wife “four or five months,” although, as Newman points out, those extra months may just have reflected the challenge of accurately predicting how long a terminally ill cancer patient has to live.

After his wife died, the treatments left the husband more than $90,000 in debt — money that he is trying to raise through an additional crowdfunding appeal.

He now wishes, he told Newman, that he had asked the clinic many more questions before going ahead.

FMI:  You can read Newman’s article on the BMJ website.

Source: https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2018/09/crowdfunding-sites-need-to-be-proactive-in-stopping-medical-quackery-experts-say/

[daddyslittlejuliet]

How Do We Get to No Kill In Our Shelters?

We all know the heartbreaking statistics on how many animals are euthanized in shelters across the country on a daily basis. We don’t need to give you more depressing stats or continue to preach to the choir of responsible pet parents. We’re looking at what it’s really going to take to get to No Kill.

The big question is what can we actually do? How can someone help if they are already at capacity for the number of dogs (or cats) that they can adopt?

What does “No Kill” mean?

Encourage friends, family and neighbors to choose a dog based on their lifestyle. Sometimes the dog breed we feel a sentimental connection with doesn’t match well with our current reality. Photography courtesy Best Friends Animal Society.

Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS) has been working toward No Kill since 1984, with a goal to get the entire nation to No Kill by 2025. The organization defines a shelter or community as “No Kill” if 90 percent of the animals that come through the shelter make it out alive. “Every healthy or treatable animal should be saved,” explains Holly Sizemore, chief national program officer for Best Friends Animal Society. “It really takes politic will, leadership and community support,” she continues. “Solutions are out there, and it’s been done so you don’t need to do anything new.”

Part of the problem is that — even those of us with the best intentions — just accept that shelters have to kill animals. We think that’s just the way it is. If just one person is willing to stand up and say “This is not acceptable,” that’s all it takes. “I’ve seen one person change their entire community,” Sizemore says.

How can you help shelters get to No Kill?

If you aren’t politically inclined, there are many other things you can do to help, too.

Open your home to a temporary foster. Even if you can’t take on any more dogs permanently (or even long term), sometimes rescues need help when foster caretakers go on vacation or just overnight during the transport process.

Volunteer your special skills. Many people think of volunteering at a shelter as cleaning up dog kennels, but rescues can use help in other areas, too. Are you an accountant? Maybe you can help with taxes. Have a knack for the written word? Maybe you can help write animal descriptions or newsletters.

Check local rescue or shelters’ wish lists. Whether it’s listed on their websites or on Amazon, many organizations list the specific items they need. Gift something off their wish list, and you know that your money and efforts are truly helping. (Note: If you like to shop on Amazon, shop through the AmazonSmile program to support a charitable organization. See smile.amazon.com for details.)

Donate services or goods. Do you have your own business? Donate your services or goods to a rescue for a silent auction or other fundraiser.

Hold politicians accountable. All you need to do is ask “Are we No Kill?” If not, “How are we doing? What are you doing to help us get there?” Sometimes just planting the seed is enough.

Encourage friends and family to choose dogs based on their lifestyle. Many of us have that one dog from our childhood that we felt connected to. But as an adult, maybe a short-nosed Pug isn’t the best choice if you want to go hiking in the mountains every weekend. Likewise, that adorable Border Collie that you grew up with on the farm is probably going to drive you crazy in your New York apartment. When people think more about what type of dog fits their lifestyle than what breed they have a sentimental connection to, fewer dogs are going to end up in the shelters in the first place.

Creating safety nets

Rescues can use help in many ways, from walking dogs to cleaning kennels to helping with paperwork or the newsletter. Photography courtesy Best Friends Animal Society.

No Kill is more than an individual effort, though. We all recognize that responsible dog breeders do exist, and they can play a part in this, too. Sizemore says it’s important for these dog breeders to “help support breed rescue organizations and help create safety nets.” She has heard of breeders that not only take back their own dogs if the family can’t take care of them anymore, but “some even take in dogs that just look like their breed.” Most (if not all) reputable dog breeders even include it in their contracts that the pet parent must give the dog back to them if they don’t want him or can’t take care of him anymore.

And lastly, pet stores and big commercial stores have a role in getting to No Kill. These stores have a big influence on their communities and have the opportunity to share the message about adoption. If they offer adoptable pets and create informational programs for the community and provide services that set pet parents up for success (like offering training classes and affordable medical services), we will be that much closer to No Kill.

The bottom line is that there is hope. Thanks to the efforts of groups like BFAS, more than 1,500 communities of all sizes across the country have achieved No Kill status. It has been done, and it can be done in any community — we just all need to pitch in and do our part!

Why do so many dogs end up in shelters?

Why are so many dogs ending up in shelters in the first place? Rescue organizations believe there are three main reasons:

Accidental births from not spaying or neutering. One unspayed or unneutered dog can lead to hundreds (if not thousands) of accidental births. All of these dogs have to go somewhere, and the ASPCA statistics show that approximately 3.3 million dogs enter shelters each year (though that number is declining). At the very least, spaying or neutering your dog reduces their risk of certain cancers, as well as the chance of them roaming to find a mate and getting hit by a car or getting into a fight with another dog. Today, there are many cost-effective or even free spaying and neutering programs available to pet parents — we just need to get the word out.

People buy from puppy mills pumping out puppies instead of adopting a homeless dog. At puppy mills, dogs live in cramped cages in horrible conditions. They often get sick and are never tested for genetic issues. If you aren’t buying a dog directly from a responsible dog breeder, find out where the dog is coming from. If the pet store won’t tell you where the puppy is from, he could be from a puppy mill.

People don’t realize the commitment (financial, training, etc.) that comes with having a dog, and it becomes too much for them. According to a research study from the ASPCA, approximately 1 million households rehome their dogs each year due to behavior issues or not being able to afford to take care of their animal. These dogs sometimes end up with family members, but 36 percent are taken to shelters (not including the percentage of family members who end up taking the dogs to shelters because they don’t want them).

The final word on No Kill

Write your politicians and ask them how they are planning to help homeless animals and get us to No Kill. Photography courtesy Best Friends Animal Society.

We can all play a role in this by creating ways for pet parents to be successful in our communities by helping to create training classes and affordable medical services. There are organizations out there that already do this (like the Training Wheels program created by Sue Sternberg mentioned in this issue’s Be Furractive column). You can support rescues with the Training Wheels program and get the word out to at-risk pet parents that help is available.

Tell us: What are you doing to help us get to No Kill?

Thumbnail: Photography ©Compassionate Eye Foundation/David Leahy | Getty Images.

Abbie is a freelance writer based in Colorado, where she lives with her husband, three dogs and bunny. She has a Diploma of Canine Behavior Science and Technology and experience as a positive reinforcement dog trainer.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Dogster magazine. Have you seen the new Dogster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting room of your vet’s office? Subscribe now to get Dogster magazine delivered straight to you!

Read more about adoption and rescue on Dogster.com:

Are You Ready to Adopt a Dog? Here’s How to Find Out

Socializing Neglected Dogs: What Goes on Behind the Scenes to Make a Mistreated Dog Adoptable

Rescue Pets Only in California Pet Stores

The post How Do We Get to No Kill In Our Shelters? appeared first on Dogster.

[carasueachterberg]

What can I say about the puppies? They are adorable, but a ton of work. Every time I get to this point (six weeks), I wonder why I do this and swear I will never do it again.

Like small children, I suppose, it’s the cuteness that keeps us from killing them. This bunch is especially cute, with something for every taste. Only four puppies are officially spoken for, so if you’re considering a puppy in your lives (and you’re ready for the work that involves), let me tell you who is still available…

Yuengling is still looking for his forever family and this kind of shocks me, since I think he is one of THE most adorable in an already adorable litter. He is fuzzy and fat like a little bear cub. His chunky face and brown butt remind me of a rottweiler, but he won’t be quite as big as a real rottie, probably landing somewhere in the vicinity of fifty pounds. He is quite the personality – always ready to play, seriously into people, and content to amuse himself with a toy when no siblings or people are available. He’s one of the few puppies (alas!) who regularly uses the puppy pads.

Seneca is a strikingly beautiful pup whose face reminds me of her mother. A gorgeous black lab like she is, I’m surprised she hasn’t been snapped up. She is almost entirely black, long legged, with shorter hair than some of the other puppies. She is VERY people-oriented, preferring all of my attention and not afraid to ask for it. She should top out around sixty pounds full grown and no doubt be as gorgeous and people-friendly as her mom.

Utz is one of the smaller pups. He’s easy-going and very people-friendly, but loves, loves, loves his toys. He always knows when I throw a new toy into the pen. As of this writing, he does not have an approved adopter, but I don’t imagine he’ll last long, as cute and nice as this pup is. He should end up about fifty pounds full grown.

Rocky is still scrawny and small. She is feisty, but wears out quickly. She looks so different than the others and is obviously the runt. Someone compared her to the grinches’ dog, probably because she isn’t fat and sleek like the others, instead she is a bit bow-legged, has very little body fat, and her fur is still patchy in places. This little pup has a great personality, though, tough with the other pups not allowing them to push her around and interested in everyone who visits. Considering she is about half the size of the others, she absolutely holds her own. She is still available for adoption with no applications, and I have a feeling she’ll be here a while so we can get her fat and healthy like her siblings. To that end, she is headed to the vet tomorrow to get a thorough check up so we can be certain she is healthy and ready to go to a forever home.

Hoagie is still available for adoption. This big, fuzzy hunk of sweetness will be easy to love. I find myself gravitating to him and holding him more than the others as he’s just that snuggly. He is a quieter pup than the others, a little hesitant to join the chaos, but once he does he brings his game. He will likely top out at about 60 pounds.

Hershey has approved adopters, but they are still considering the charms of all the pups and deciding which one is the pup that will be best for their family. Hershey only gets cuter. His chocolate color, combined with those light brown socks and tiny tan eyebrows are pretty irresistible. He can, on occasion, have a hound’s countenance, which gains him sympathy points with whoever is visiting. This guy is an all-around nice dog—not too wild, but definitely not shy.

Keystone, Tastykake, and Nittany are all adoption pending with adopters who seemed committed to bringing them home, but as I tell everyone, that should never stop you from applying if you feel a puppy is right for you since situations change and nothing is a done deal until the deal is done. Keystone is the big boy of the bunch, weighing in at nearly ten pounds at six weeks (which put him at nearly 75 pounds full-grown on my puppy growth chart!).

Tastykake is still the demanding lovebug and is the second biggest puppy.

photo by Nancy Slattery

photo by Nancy Slattery

Nittany is a love—gentler than some of the others, quiet but playful.

photo by Nancy Slattery

Nancy Slattery, the photographer who many of the pictures above, plus the holiday pictures, is working with me to create an Another Good Dog puppy calendar featuring the PA pups. We’ll be offering them for sale very soon as a fundraiser for WhoWillLetTheDogsOut.org, a mission of OPH that will take the two of us to pounds and shelters in Tennessee and Mississippi this February to raise awareness of the dogs in need in those states. I hope to have information on the Facebook group and this blog by the end of the week just in case anyone wants to purchase one for their holiday list!

Meanwhile, Bell is doing wonderfully. She is friendly and affectionate and finally (finally!) putting on weight and filling out. She is simply beautiful but tragically not very photogenic as she is always in motion.

photo by Nancy Slattery

photo by Nancy Slattery

photo by Nancy Slattery

This girl will need an active adopter who is looking for a running buddy or hiking pal. She is smart and busy, but thankfully respects fences and gates (she’s tall enough to scale them). As a houseguest, she is doing great in her crate and almost has the hang of housetraining. She is curious about what’s on the counter (easily within her reach) but so far is demonstrating great restraint. She does seem to adore my shoes, but has yet to do any real damage, preferring to simply carry them around or lick them (my shoes have never been cleaner).

Bell will be available to go home in early January, but if you are interested in adopting her, you should go ahead and apply even though she will not appear on the sight until closer to the New Year.

If you’re local and would like to visit puppies, feel free to reach out to me. The more socialization they can get at this point, the better.

One last thing – Today is Giving Tuesday. If you’d like to support the work we do at OPH, I’d be grateful if you considered donating to the fundraiser I set up for OPH. Adoption fees do not cover the cost of rescuing, as we often pull dogs that have medical needs. Rocky is headed to the vet tomorrow and I don’t know what we’ll find. I do know that no matter what it is, OPH will take care of her, and to do that it takes money, so if you are looking for a place to make your tax-deductible donation this holiday season, please consider OPH.

Thanks for reading!

Cara

If you’d like regular updates all my foster dogs past and present, plus regular videos of the PA pups, be sure to join the Facebook group, Another Good Dog.

For information on me, my writing, and my upcoming book, One Hundred Dogs and Counting: One  Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues, visit CaraWrites.com.

And if you’d like to know where all these dogs come from and how you can help solve the crisis of too many unwanted dogs in our shelters, visit WhoWillLetTheDogsOut.org.

Our family fosters through the all-breed rescue, Operation Paws for Homes, a network of foster homes in Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and south-central PA.

Recently released from Pegasus Books and available anywhere books are sold: Another Good Dog: One Family and Fifty Foster Dogs.

I love to hear from readers and dog-hearted people! Email me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.

        If they weren't so cute.... rescue puppies available for adoption. #opttoadopt #Christmaspuppies @operationpawsforhomes What can I say about the puppies? They are adorable, but a ton of work. Every time I get to this point (six weeks), I wonder why I do this and swear I will never do it again.