EDU C ATION IS THE KEY

by ERIN LOPEZ

Jenifer Evans has loved all animals for as long as she can remember. As a young child, she helped her mother and Papaw Thornburg rescue orphaned and injured animals.

“Kitties were picked up from the alleyways of Charlotte and Kings Mountain, dogs from Foote Mineral Mine where Papaw worked, and squirrels and opossums from Papaw’s property,” said Evans. Through the years, her immense love for animals never faded. In 2007, she began to volunteer for the local humane society with her family. “I wanted them to experience my compassion for animals in need,” said Evans.

In her 15 years of working as an animal advocate, she has worked with various rescue organizations, including Ruff Dog Rescue, through which she currently fosters guinea pigs.

In 2019, Evans began her own nonprofit organization called The Henry County Animal Initiative (HCAI). The goal of the program is “to address the overpopulation of animals in Henry County through Education, Spay/Neuter and our TNR (trapping, spaying/neutering, and releasing) program for residents and businesses in our community.”

The organization is not a rescue, but instead educates the community on what can be done to prevent animal overpopulation, mainly through the efforts of TNR.

With TNR, feral or semi-feral cats are placed back into the environment where they were trapped and HCAI volunteers provide the community education on the importance of TNR as well as providing humane traps, allowing community members to trap other semi-feral and feral cats to get spayed or neutered.

“My passion is to bring the community together and bring more awareness to the importance of spay/neuter,” said Evans.

Evans stresses the importance of spay/neuter to also prevent diseases in pets that would arise without the pets being spayed/ neutered. “It’s very important for the overall wellbeing of the health of the pet,” said Evans.

Through outreach, HCAI is able to target areas that may have a severe overpopulation of animals and assist with dog and cat food as well as pay for the cost of animals to be spayed/ neutered, when funding is available.

“Low-income areas feel like they don’t have any options and they don’t want to spay and neuter their pets when they can barely afford to feed their families, so outreach is 80% of what we do,” explains Evans.

The most important part of HCAI, Evans states, is the participation of volunteers. Without volunteers, HCAI could not successfully conduct TNR in the community and grow the efforts of the organization.

Donations are also instrumental in the operation of HCAI, as they use the funding to purchase pet food, assist with small vet bills, as well as the cost to spay/neuter animals.

Evans is hoping to expand HCAI to work with after school programs in Henry County to implement a humane education class to teach students about proper pet care.