A year ago, the new Marshall Pet Adoption Center officially opened its doors. To celebrate this and all that the shelter and its group of volunteers have been able to accomplish over the past 12 months, MPAC will be hosting an Open House Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. at 2502 E. Travis St.
The event will feature a range of activities for children and their families during the open day, including crafts for children. Tours of the shelter will also be offered to the public.
“It’s a party, we really want it to be a celebration of our first year,” said Mandy Smith of Animal Friends Marshall.
Café Mojo Beverage Bar will also be on site during the event, selling lemonade and coffee drinks to community members in attendance. Not only will Café Mojo be offering treats for people, but there will also be treats for cats and dogs available during the celebration.
The event is hosted by Marshall Animal Friends, according to Smith, who added that Marshall’s Patterson Dodge Jeep Ram is sponsoring the event.
“We want people to come out so we can show our appreciation to our supporters and offer anyone who didn’t get a chance to see the shelter a visit,” Smith said.
The new Marshall Pet Adoption Center officially opened Friday, August 6, 2021, after more than a year of planning and fundraising for the project by both the City of Marshall and the nonprofit Friends of Marshall Animals.
Smith said the new shelter facilities were debated when it was first established, but the results volunteers and city staff have seen since the new building was created are immeasurable.
“There are so many things we do now that we never could have done in the old shelter,” Smith said.
The old building was much smaller and also lacked a community hall and training areas for animals and shelter volunteers, which limited the use of space by volunteers and city staff. .
Smith said that since the new shelter was established, Friends of Animals Marshall and MPAC are now eligible for a number of grants, with $15,000 in grant funds secured for the shelter in its first year of operation.
“The grant opportunities are huge, now that we’re eligible, it opens so many doors for us,” Smith said.
The new facility has also looked into forming a more robust volunteer program, which includes volunteers to help with day-to-day shelter operations as well as foster care volunteers, who help reduce shelter numbers.
Smith said that in the first year, FOMA was able to train and certify about 200 volunteers for the new shelter, beyond the volunteer program run in the old building.
She added that the addition of the community hall in the new shelter has allowed for the gathering and training of these volunteers, but also allows the shelter to connect more closely with the community.
“The Green Thumb Garden Club actually uses our community hall for their meeting space, and they volunteered to do a lot of our landscaping for free,” Smith said, “It really helps those community bonds.”
The shelter has also been able to offer more medical support for the animals in its care, as well as a wide range of enrichment programs for its animals, improving their quality of life. FOMA has also expanded its transportation program over the past year, thanks to new shelter facilities, with 50 transportations organized over the past year by the North Shore Animal League alone.
Throughout the past year, Marshall Animal Friends and MPAC have also worked to host a number of outreach events, including spaying and neutering events, vaccination events, and even a hand wash. dog to continue to educate and reach out to the community.
“We’ve just seen so much support since this new building was built,” Smith said, “We have people just coming to the shelter to donate and that never would have happened before.”
