American Red Lion Interview

[00:00:00]

Hi and welcome to the Great Charities podcast, where we explain what great charities do in a way that is easy to understand. And today I’m here with Janelle Babington. That, according to herself, has an overwhelming passion to stop animal abuse and to work at then to aggressively work for humane practices for our animals. And I’m also here with Keith for our first two person podcast ever. And Janelle started working with Keith as a result of the Hurricane Dorian that devastated the Bahamas in October 2019. And we will get into how that happened later in this episode. But the two of them are working with an organization called the American Red Lion that is providing relief for animals in disasters situations. Janelle, did I get that right in the introduction, Ed writes. So if you were to explain what the American Red Lion is doing to someone that is not at all familiar with your cause and the problems that you are facing, how would you explain what you do?

[00:01:12]

Well, American Red Lion is designed to basically stop the unnecessary abandoning and suffering of animals during disasters. When we when when Hurricane Matthew hit my hometown in Wilmington, North Carolina in 2016, as an animal lover, I wanted to donate funds to to help the animals. And I couldn’t find anywhere to donate. So American red line was formed. I thought, you know, here I’m trying to give away money. I want to help the animals. I don’t know who to donate to. Nobody’s soliciting donations from me. And I ended up donating to a Web site called Next Door RT.com. Two people I never met. No idea. These people. On as to where the funds were going, but. When disaster strikes and your emotions are running high, you want to donate.

[00:02:06]

You want to make a difference. So after the snare, it it took me about twelve phone calls and four hours for me to try to make a donation. I thought, this is crazy. And I actually was at state at the time, which was made a little bit more difficult for me to donate, but that the more the story is, nobody was soliciting a donation from me. I didn’t know who to donate to. And after Hurricane Matthew, I knew there had to be an easier, more trustworthy way created for people to be able to donate to the animals during these crises. So American Red Lion set out to collect donations and provide funds by identifying the credible boots on the ground and the organizations who were out there rescuing the animals during disasters. Basically, it’s designed to be a venue, a trustworthy venue for people to donate to. And we work as as a middle ground organization, dispersing funds to the organizations who are on the ground, actually rescuing.

[00:03:06]

The lowest idea with the American red line then is to prepare beforehand. A catastrophe happens so that there’s already a structure to take care of animals that will be abandoned. Compare that to having when the dishdasha has struck. Then you collect founts and you don’t know where to go.

[00:03:24]

Absolutely. You have approximately thirty thousand animal welfare organizations in the United States. So when disaster strikes, you know, people want to be able to make a donation, but they don’t know who to donate to. We’ve got some wonderful organizations. We have the Humane Society at the ASPCA, but there’s only two organizations. And when you have these massive disasters like Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Dorian.

[00:03:52]

You have 20. Thirty thousand organizations able to help that people keep donating to the same charities over again.

[00:04:00]

And these other charities aren’t getting the money to be able to rescue the animals. So this is where American red line.

[00:04:06]

I see. And I’m situated in Stockholm. And we are blessed to not have any natural disasters at all here. We don’t have any crazy storms. We don’t have any earthquakes. So for people in my country or maybe in the rest of Europe. What is there something you’d think that we don’t understand about what happens to animals when there is a disaster like this that you would like for us to be aware of?

[00:04:36]

Well, I think the biggest reason is that the biggest problem we have is.

[00:04:42]

That you’ve got probably sixty five percent of the US owns either one cat or one dog. So when disaster strikes and people are people know there’s going to be disaster, they know they need to do something with their animals. But they’re in survival mode. They need to know where to bring their animals and they don’t know where to bring them currently.

[00:05:03]

So that I understand them. You have an animal. You know beforehand that a catastrophe would come like a storm or something. And you have a dry run and you have no means and resources to what can’t you bring the animal?

[00:05:20]

There’s no way to bring the animals. The American Red Cross will set up shelters for people, but only service animals are allowed. So we’ve got a big problem here, OK?

[00:05:33]

So when it comes so they don’t part of the animal aims to those rescues. Don’t let the animals into the shelters. Right.

[00:05:39]

So we need to have some sort of coordinated system where people can bring their animals and they know ahead of time where to bring the animals before disaster strikes. Most people are just you know, they have to go to a shelter. They can’t bring their animals, so they end up abandoning their animals. It’s a terrible situation. People will try with their last bit of gas to get to an animal rescue shelter and say, please take my dog or my cat. And these rescue shelters will do anything to take their dog or cat, but they have limited resources and limited room themselves.

[00:06:13]

So what happens then with the animals that get abandoned? They’re abandoned. Exactly. They stay in the house. So they run into streets.

[00:06:20]

Well, they they they they abandon them. Exactly. Yeah. They stay in the house. They run on streets. They drown.

[00:06:26]

There’s there’s really not much being done about it. They did. They’re there after Katrina. Hurricane Katrina, which was a catastrophic disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana. If you knew anything about that, there was an app.

[00:06:47]

How is the Emergency Assistance Act and the Emergency Planning Act of 2015?

[00:06:53]

And what?

[00:06:58]

This implies that the United States needs to have some sort of operational plans at rest the needs of people with household pets and service animals for disaster, emergency or an emergency. But these acts aren’t being enforced. And quite frankly, they’re not going to be effective if people can’t donate to to the organizations that are able to do the rescuing.

[00:07:20]

So that makes sense. Yes, I think I think I got what you meant there. So. Yes. Keep going.

[00:07:29]

People have to. People end up abandoning their pets because they’re in survival mode. They have to leave. They have to take care of themselves. The shelters don’t allow their pets to come in. So it’s just a horrible situation all the way around. And that that doesn’t include the stray animals. Of course, there’s stray animals. I really do.

[00:07:49]

Externally focused on other animals, like maybe farm animals or wild animals where it’s only focus on cats and dogs.

[00:07:56]

Oh, no. There’s there’s a focus on farm animals. Everybody, again, is in survival mode when these disaster strikes and the farms need money and they need resources. It’s really kind of helter skelter and it continues to be that way year after year. It. It’s just kind of helter skelter. Our goal at American Red Line is to be able to fund these small organizes organizations ahead of time so that people know ahead of time where they can bring their dog or cat. If these smaller organizations have the funds and supplies on hand on hand, then people will know that they can bring their dog or cat there. And these local animal welfare organizations will stay with your dog and your cat and they will take care of them if they have the funds and resources to do so.

[00:08:42]

So as it stands, America with lion will. Has it has a large platform to stand on and. Select. Quite a bit of funds when disaster strikes and we take a lot of time identifying these organizations that are out there with animals who have analysts have been dropped after them, who are out there trying to rescue and we get the funds in their hands as possible.

[00:09:09]

But I’m very glad someone is taking this responsibility to help these abandoned animals. How did you and Keith then meet?

[00:09:20]

I started working with the oldest together when her came door in struck in October. Is that right, Keith? No, it was on September 2nd, September 2nd, when Hurricane Durin struck.

[00:09:34]

I did my thing. American Red Lion started soliciting funds and was collecting funds. Now, the next part of my job is to start following the story 24/7. I have a friend who’s a writer and she’s got a lot of stories from Hertz’s. She has a lot of information. So I start filing the stories about what’s going on on the news and then identify the people out there helping. I stumbled on Keith Cooper, who was doing all this, rescuing the animals. He was. He was in the news. I saw him on Facebook. I was Googling about him. I was learning about him. I was so impressed with everything that he was doing. And then I was figuring out who was getting money, who wasn’t getting money, which is what we do. It’s a lot of research goes into every dime we donate. And I discovered that Keith wasn’t getting the funds he needed, but he was out there doing his extraordinary job of rescuing all these animals. So I made the executive decision that he was going to get the bulk of the funds he was going to heat.

[00:10:36]

He actually ended up getting all of the funds from Hurricane Katrina because of the research that I did and the work that Keith was doing. So that’s how I keep an eye connected. All right.

[00:10:51]

He’s kind of talking and Keith, what would you say is the success so far that you are the most proud of?

[00:10:59]

Oh, well, the most successful thing we’ve done so far. Email is the spay and neutering of the animals that I’ve been able to bring in that were voluntarily given to me by the owners in the neighborhoods where I live.

[00:11:16]

Could you clarify what kind of neutering?

[00:11:18]

I didn’t understand that word spay SPCA. Why speak and what that means that the dogs and animals are clipped of their sexual reproductive organs so that they don’t reproduce and make more puppies or more cats.

[00:11:34]

Case that you do the first thing when you take them in and take care of them.

[00:11:38]

Right. Yeah. And also the other aspects of it is treating them with a tick and flea medicine to give them some relief from the itching as well as to provide food, which is the most essential thing I’ve been doing is feeding the stray animals that were abandoned or that have no owners. And I would actually go to houses where people have animals or or an abundance of animals that they weren’t properly taking care of. And I would ask them if I could feed their animals for them because they didn’t have the money after the hurricane, because a lot of people lost their jobs and couldn’t afford to feed the animals that were in there. So we went from literally I mean, I can’t even begin to tell you how many homes and how many communities I’ve been to over the last four months to try to help people with relief efforts in that sense. And also, when people would bring over dog food or cat food, I would use my truck to actually go into the communities and provide food to those families that had pets or or they were responsible pet owners and give them enough food so that the dogs and the cats would have enough food to eat for a specific period of time. And when Janelle got involved, she saw what I was doing on Facebook, which is the social media platform that I use to promote what I’m doing. But I wasn’t really promoting it to get any funding. I was promoting it because it kept me busy and from doing it, losing my mind during the hurricane because I had lost everything myself. So I figured, hey, I saw these animals walking around and nobody was really looking after them. And that’s when I decided that I would just take what dog food I had and start feeding the animals that I saw were in distress.

[00:13:24]

And where did you find the instinct to you said you lost everything yourself. Where did you find the drived instead of rebuilding your own circumstances to start to go out to feed other people’s animals?

[00:13:38]

And 2016 when Hurricane Matthew hit us. I lost everything in that storm. And so that was another reason why it was doing again after Dorian, because I had done it before in 2016. But I didn’t know Janelle at the time. So I made do with what I had and what I could do during that traumatic storm to assist the animals. So it was almost like I kind of picked up where I left off. But because there was no aid coming to the island right away and I couldn’t rebuild or do anything with my own life, I kept myself occupied so that I could take care of the animals as best I could if I were knowing what you knew now and when I know now.

[00:14:21]

It started with Hurricane Matthew in 2016. If you had funds ahead of time and supplies and cages and a venue when the next hurricane hit. We’re not supposed to say that you would be there to collect all these stray animals and stay with them through the disasters.

[00:14:39]

Absolutely, because I would find a safe haven for them and I would provide my vehicle to transport them to places like, for example, with few veterinarians we have on the island or people who are fostering animals that would be a perfect place and or finding homes or facilities that are in a higher ground that are not prone to flooding, perhaps, and maybe utilize those places as havens to keep the dogs or the cats safe from the hurricane. So it’s it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of funding, obviously, to make sure these kinds of things happen, because we must be realistic that there will be another storm and we have to be better prepared, because if you go through the learning curves of what you’ve been through with these last two major hurricanes in the last three years, it becomes quite obvious that a plan and some set of protocols need to be put in place so that we can provide some type of sustainable care and relief for the animals before they lose their life and these tragic storms.

[00:15:46]

And Eric, if you were to have a hurricane watch and they do it in Sweden and I wanted to donate to the animals and from the United States, I would have no idea who to

donate to. Who is out there in Sweden helping? I would have no clue. And this is where American Red Line Disaster Fund comes into play. We do the research. We try to find out who is helping. So there are well-meaning people out there all over the world that want to give to animals when disaster strikes, but they don’t know who to give to. And they keep giving to the same charities over again because they can’t find these other charities. They don’t know who’s doing the work and who’s not doing the work. And like I mentioned, Humane Society and the ASPCA, the two largest, perhaps two of the largest animal welfare organizations in states, do a phenomenal job. But when you have these massive disasters, it takes more than two organizations and a lot of credible, sustainable local organizations out there who who can do the work but need the funds.

[00:16:47]

Steven Cook, you guys are doing when these disaster strikes is so important and crucial and it feels. Good that we can help maybe spread a message somehow in this podcast and talk about these issues. So we’re coming up towards the end of this podcast now and I’m wondering if someone is hearing about this. They feel they think this is a good idea. They feel inspired by your calls. They feel inspired by Keith’s willingness to care for others and our animals, even though he himself lost anything and they somehow want to support the work that you’re doing. What can they do to help?

[00:17:27]

Well, American Red Lion has earned a great reputation.

[00:17:31]

We’ve we’ve made the great non-profits list for the past three years of being in existence. And we’ve got the GuideStar good of transparency. That’s one of the number one nonprofit rating organizations in the United States. So we’ve got a great reputation with the people that we’ve donated to. And the organizations write wonderful testimonials. They’re very happy. I think Keith can testify to this when they do get punishment from a mine disaster. Sam, thank you so much. We don’t know how we were going to do this. We need money for this. We needed money for that. And, you know, liberty is donated to us, that sort of thing.

[00:18:10]

So it’s it’s I think, you know, with the American Red Lion. Well, the things we have to work on is really being able to effectively communicate what we do and how we do it so we can continue to get getting more funds. We can do the research behind the scenes. That’s where we excel. But it’s really keeping at keeping ourselves out there on this large platform, which we’ve done pretty well at doing that kind of screaming out to the world, hey, send us the funds. We’ll find the thirty thousand seventy. Any funds, we’ll do that research for you.

[00:18:46]

So what can someone do if they want to help? Would you like for them to talk about your call? So would you like for them to donate to your cause. What could be the biggest thing they can do?

[00:18:55]

The biggest thing is to build up our fund. The American Red Light Disaster Fund. And right now we’re working on we’re called Bahamas Spay and Neuter Project 2020. There are some 10000 stray cats and dogs. They call them PopCap Pack cakes and pack cats. Area of expertise.

[00:19:15]

And this is a big project that Keith and I are taking on to see how many of these animals we can get fixed medically so that they don’t continue to reproduce. Very, very important sounds.

[00:19:30]

Very important. So if you listen to this, please go to the American Red Lion dot org and support their cause. Janelle and Keith, it was lovely speaking with you and for you listening. We’ll see you tomorrow.

[00:19:44]

Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to e-mail and thank you to Janelle. Thank you, Kate.