Community Corner
West Hartford Resident Keeps Pets With Families Through 'No Animal Left Unfed'
Organization helps families in need by providing food for pets.
Just call up Facebook for 15 minutes, and invariably users will receive messages forwarded from friends about some animal rescue organization that’s trying to prevent a homeless dog or cat from being euthanized.
While most, if not all, of those organizations are surely well-intended and do great work, it begs the question: what if it never has to get to the point of having to rescue an animal to begin with?
Enter West Hartford resident Shonya Harrison and her non-profit organization No Animals Left Unfed, Inc.
Find out what's happening in West Hartfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Harrison, through her organization, helps keep animals with their families by providing pet food for those in need.
In an interview on Wednesday, Harrison said that she serves about 50 clients, primarily in Hartford and New Britain, who were hit hardest by the recent economic downturn.
Find out what's happening in West Hartfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
But her operation is growing, as she now has clients in Simsbury, Farmington and West Hartford.
“Instead of taking animals in, why not keep the entire family intact?” she asked rhetorically. “How do you keep the unit whole? You do that by working with them.”
No Animal Left Unfed is a pending 501(c)3 corporation in which Harrison does curbside visits to families who qualify for her program based on need.
Once they qualify Harrison will provide up to 12 months of food for family pets - dogs, cats, birds, etc. She said that she does not discriminate based on dog breed, so pitbull and Rottweiler owners qualify.
The animals also must be spayed or neutered, she said.
Harrison, 43, said that she got her start in 2006 when she fostered animals through the Connecticut Humane Society. She then started feeding the cats around her mother’s Hartford home. She got in touch with Hartford Animal Control Officer Sherry DeGenova, who helped Harrison rescue a dog and it “escalated from there,” she said.
Harrison, who has done social work professionally in the past, started No Animal Left Unfed in 2010 for the simple reason that there was a huge need.
“It seems so overwhelming,” she said. “I asked, ‘What can I do? How can I use my skill set?’ I was always an outreach person.”
So, when Harrison takes on a family as a client, she doesn’t just provide pet food. Indeed, she also provides information about where families can get help with rent and other services.
For now, Harrison said that she would like to keep her one-woman operation small, utilizing the donations from her main sponsor, Help Willy’s Friends in Durham, to feed the animals.
She has also done letter-writing campaigns to local supermarkets in hopes of procuring donations.
“Everything is word of mouth,” she said. “I try to pace self. I was hoping to get some space to store pet food. IAMS can tell me it’s OK to pick up a palette of food, but where am I going to put it?”
DeGenova, the Hartford animal control officer, said that what Harrison does is amazing.
"I wish there were more donations sent here way in terms of food," DeGenova said. "We've handed out state neuter vouchers, toys bowls food. It shows we can all work together to help people keep their pets. She helps the feral cats on the street.
"It's a great thing that she does. I'd love to see her have an abundance of food, so she doesn't have to go out of her way to get donations. People don't understand there's a need. People barely scraping by to feed their families, let alone their pets."
For more information on No Animal Left Unfed or to donate, please visit here or its Facebook page here.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
