In the spirit of Christmas, we were inspired to do something special for the streetdogs in our neighbourhood, as there are many of them. We were blessed with a Christmas filled with amazing food, as were our two dogs; Cairo and Topaz, but most of the streetdogs are not as fortunate, and do not have proper homes or food sources. As a result, many of them are underfed, and are so excited whenever we feed them. We now have a community of streetdogs who guard our house and play with our dogs, because we always play with them and feed them. In fact there is a group of dogs we know by name, who are not ours, but are always at our doorstep!

We wanted to help the neighbouring dogs, so we put together 3 big boxes full of food, and went down the road to pick some Kanda leaves, as these are biodegradable and would serve as eco-friendly plates for their food. We then walked up the road to an area where we usually see a gang of hungry street dogs, and they all ran quickly towards us when they saw the food! Akhil, Shenali and I then lay out the leaves as plates in different areas for the dogs, and served some food onto each leaf. We went around to keep refilling their ‘plates’, and made some new friends as they quickly warmed up to us and loved to be given some affection too! By the time they had finished eating, they were sitting around us waiting to be petted, which was quite adorable. All in all we were able to feed around 8 street dogs today. We hope to do this almsgiving more regularly, at least once a month in the future.

The learning outcomes connected to this would be LO6, which is to demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance, as this was a service project helping the neighbourhood dogs. Globally there is a concern here as many stray dogs are malnourished and have no shelter. This also connects to LO3, as it involved planning and initiating a CAS experience. Within the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard to continue with the conventional physical services we do in school, and so engaging in service projects within the community is very important. I look forward to repeating this activity, as I feel it really helps the street dogs, and my whole family are now dog lovers, so it is important to us to help wherever we can.