The new Best Friends Network is now live, marking a new day in animal welfare activism.
Rich with networking (or “petworking”) opportunities, the new Network allows people everywhere who care deeply about animals to work together in a much more streamlined, efficient and potent manner than ever before to save lives and achieve our ultimate goal of making No More Homeless Pets a reality.
The new Network retains the news, blogs and forums of the old, but now offers a smorgasbord of valuable new uses. Here’s a brief rundown, by area, of the content, features and capabilities you can now start engaging to improve the lives of animals wherever you live.
To help us achieve our goal of No More Homeless Pets, we’ve made the four Best Friends campaigns the cornerstone of the Network. These campaigns are:
• Focus on Felines: Keeping cats safe and out of shelters
• First Home Forever Home: Helping people provide a loving, forever home for their pets
• Pit Bulls: Saving America’s Dog: Restoring the image of pit bulls and challenging breed discrimination
• Puppies Aren’t Products: Exposing the connection between puppy mills and pet stores, and encouraging adoption
By clicking on the “campaigns” tab on the Network homepage, you can read the latest news related to any one campaign, connect with others participating in it, and learn ways you can take action and help make that campaign a success in your community.
An area bursting with networking possibilities, the Go Local section is where you can go to make a difference in the lives of animals residing in your city, state or country. By clicking on a particular state on the map or by going to a particular region or country outside the U.S., you can keep abreast of the news and issues affecting the lives of animals in your region. You can also connect with other animal lovers in your community and get locally active in one or more of the No More Homeless Pets campaigns or in any worthy cause improving the lives of animals where you live.
Once landing on the Go Local map, you’ll notice that we’ve highlighted the following cities within the United States: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and New York.
These “pilot project cities” are communities in which we’ve activated programs such as Pup My Ride, Puppy Store Free LA, Feral Freedom, and others that support and drive our four No More Homeless Pets campaigns. If you happen to live in any of these cities, we encourage you to participate in one or more of the projects there. If you don’t, there are more than enough ways you can still help, as you’ll learn in any of the four campaign sections.
The Go Local area is where you can also go to make the difference in the life of an individual animal. Here you can view profiles, fed by Petfinder.com, of animals up for adoption in your city and state.
The social networking aspect of the new Network really comes into focus on our Get Social area, where it’s easy to connect with like-minded people in your neighborhood and build the kind of relationships that lead to a concerted, grassroots movement that can affect change on a local and national scale.
Functioning much like Facebook, the area allows you to find friends who share your interests, passions, and ideas. From your personal profile page, you can blog, add links to articles and videos, make comments and announcements, and invite friends to have a look.
The Groups area of the new Network is where animal shelters, rescue groups, and special interest groups can go to enhance their profile online and capture the attention of thousands of animal lovers. Groups can, in essence, create their own mini-sites and publicize—through news, blogs, videos and photos—the work they’re engaged in. Here organizers can post photos and descriptions of adoptable animals, get the word out on planned events, request volunteers, and thereby have the online presence they need to accomplish their goals.
Perhaps the most exciting development for helping animal welfare groups, the new Network will soon enable approved animal welfare organizations to accept donations online through the soon-to-be launched Network Charities program. Visit the Groups section to find out how this new Best Friends program can benefit your organization.
This area tells you how you can volunteer for Best Friends, either at our sanctuary or from wherever you happen to live.
If you need help using the new Network, click on Help at the top of the site.
Feedback
We would love to hear what you think about the Network and what we can do to augment the site as we continue to enhance and fine-tune it. Visit
network.bestfriends.org/groups/techcentral and post your comments and suggestions in the forum.
Photo provided by Jen Schrolucke