Working On Behalf Of Animals

To the Editor:

Congratulations Newtown High School’s Animal Concerns Club on a very successful year! My daughter, Alissa Silber, started The Animal Concerns Club three years ago. The club has approximately 20 members and is very diversified with all aspects of animal well-being. They have supported events and fundraisers for local animal organization such as The Animal Center, Newtown Dog Pound, Canine Advocates, and Strutt Your Mutt for Newtown’s dog park. Our club has become very visible in the community and has been approached by individuals, as well, who seek out our help finding lost animals, pet adoption information and even involvement in local animal fundraisers.

Through fundraising, the club has made monetary donations to national animal organizations such as Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, N.Y., The Humane Society of the United States, and Best Friends Animal Society in Knab, Utah. They’ve even tackled politics in our town with their efforts to educate Newtown residents against the prospect of a deer culling (mass slaughter of deer on our treasured open space) in our town and have supported The Wild Life Education Coalition (Wildlifeeducationcoalition.org) here in Newtown with their campaign as well.

We have a ready, willing, and able group of young men and women who have the compassion to help animals both domestic and wild. We want Newtown to be known as being animal friendly. We support having a “no kill” animal shelter and know it would be an asset to our community. As a club, we encourage all of our Newtown residents to support our local and national animal organizations. The next club meeting for the 2011-2012 year will begin in September and we want to encourage any high school student who’s interested in the well-being of all animals to join the Animal Concerns Club this fall. We have so much to look forward to this year in making a difference within our community for the animals and we’d love for you to be part of it.

Alissa will be heading off to college this fall and her goal is to start an Animal Concerns Club there, too. If you know of any schools that would like to start a club, please feel free to give me their information and we can let them know how we started ours. Alissa’s goal is to someday have every high school and college across the country have it’s own Animal Concerns Club. A club to help educate its youth on compassion for animals and also to be a resource for the needs of its community.

Lorrie Silber

Parent Advisor

NHS Animal Concerns Club

5 Crown View Drive, Sandy Hook                                August 2, 2011