About us
Who we are and why we began
We are a small group of people trying to improve the life of animals on Corfu, hence, the Agni Animal Welfare Fund has been set up in order that friends and visitors can make donations to help the islands stray animals.
In 2005 we helped several cats with donations received from friends who visited Agni during the previous summer. The offers of help came after seeing the little cat that lived around Agni beach. With her distinctive and attractive looks many people noticed her. I spoke to one or two of her admirers and mentioned to several people that she had been spayed the previous winter, which was why she had no kittens and looked so well compared to the other female cats. Seeing the difference in this little cat compared to her sister and female colleagues inspired others to donate money in order for us to sterilise more female cats.
Our inspiration
Earlier that year, a friend had suggested to myself the possibility of setting up a charity or fund in order to help Corfu’s stray animals and along with the offers to help more of the Agni cats, it became apparent to us that there was support for the animals and that visitors would be interested in helping and supporting an animal welfare fund. This inspired us to go ahead with a neutering programme that we had been discussing for some time and form Agni Animal Welfare Fund. The charity was started in January 2006 and the ‘Little Cat’ being our inspiration is the Mascot for the charity.
Our objectives
Our primary objectives are to neuter as many cats as our funds will allow, male or female. To help any sick cat or dog and offer medication where necessary and provide food for street animals to help them survive the winter.
and where we are today
Our primary objective at the time was to neuter as many female cats as we could afford and reduce the number of kittens born in the summer. Since our first year we have received a great deal of support and are now neutering both males and females as long as our funds allow us to.
As a charity we also try to discourage 'excessive' feeding during the summer months and ask visitors not to take the cats into their villas and apartments during their visit as they are thrown out at the end of the season and then have to struggle through the winter months on their own.
We now have several people helping with out work in other areas of Corfu enabling us to reach many more animals. In areas that we have spayed and neutered cats we provide feeding areas or someone in that area to feed them. Many people both Greek and English will put food out for a few cats themselves but find it impossible to feed 20 or 30 of them. By keeping the numbers down we are reducing the suffering and helping the existing ones to survive the winter.
The cats find much of their food themselves in the summer, and we try to encourage Taverna owners to put scraps out for them at the back of the Tavernas, they will not then hang around the tables begging and pestering visitors. Not everyone loves cats and even those that do, may not want to be pestered by cats and kittens whilst they are eating at the Tavernas.
As our income and support has increased we have also been able to help a few dogs, mainly giving medication and providing food. We will continue to help some of the stray dogs as funds allow, but our prime objective is to neuter the cats, very few other charities have a neutering programme as extensive as ours, but other charities on Corfu are helping and supporting the stray dogs.
The street dog problem proves to be a little different from that of the cats and whilst we help in emergency situations the dog rescues also try to re-home street dogs as the dogs find it more difficult to live in the wild.
The AAWF also supports Corfu Donkey Rescue, who are, in return a great help to us. We give a hand at the stables when time permits and we also neuter and spay all the barn cats.
