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How to Volunteer
With an average of two mini-clinics each month, and two MASH-style volume-clinics each year, opportunities abound for helping PATA. We have volunteers who dedicate their time, 100%, but we also appreciated those who can spare an hour or two. Whatever your time and your expertise, we need you, and you can make a difference in the community.
PATA Volunteers perform various functions: administrative, hands-on animal care (non-professional), and medical (vets and techs). Each is described, below, but in actuality, the functions overlap and entertwine so that an individual volunteer might perform any or all of the listed tasks.
Administrative Volunteers
Keeping a charitable organization afloat requires a dedicated behind-the-scenes staff. PATA is an all-volunteer organization with only a few people performing a huge number of administrative tasks that include:
- Scheduling, organizing and producing clinics,
- Managing logistics and volunteers,
- Planning and producing fund raisers,
- Marketing and advertising the organization itself, as well as clinics and fund raisers, and
- Interacting with local health and government agencies.
As free spay/neuter clinics are the backbone of PATA's campaign to reduce the numbers of street animals in Manzanillo and the surrounding barrios, so too are the behind-the-scenes organizers the backbone of each clinic. To get a clinic off the ground, our volunteers:
- Gather money to purchase supplies;
- Contact the community to provide a site and to organize neighborhood support, then follow-up to solve problems and changes;
- Survey the site and address work-arounds;
- Schedule vets, vet students, vet techs and hands-on volunteers;
- Train volunteers;
- Inventory existing supplies and purchase shortfalls;
- Package and sterilize instruments and surgery supplies;
- Haul cages, tables, equipment and supplies to the clinic sites; and then
- Gather up, haul, clean/sterlize/launder, inventory and store equipment and supplies, afterward.
If you can help with any part of these clinic preparations, please contact PATA.
Hands-On Animal Care (So Much More than "Petting Cats")
Clinic volunteers are responsible for the health and welfare of our patients and their owners before and after surgery. Clinic volunteers:
- Pack and hual clinic equipment;
- Unload and set up clinic equipment and supplies;
- Assemble cages;
- Trap ferals using humane traps;
- Receive patients and fill out clinic paperwork;
- Track patient progress through the clinic, from reception to surgery, recovery and discharge;
- Monitor patient vital signs after surgery; and
- Instruct owners on post-surgery care.
We have compiled a master address list of hands-on volunteers who we notify whenever help is needed. If you'd like to be notified when clinics are scheduled, we can add your email address to our contact list. We will also provide training on any of the jobs you're interested in. Contact PATA to learn more about volunteering.
Vets and Techs
PATA loves the support we've received from vets and techs from abroad. Not only is it fun and rewarding for you to lend your skills to a community much in need, we like to think that you get a lot in return.
For veterinarians and vet techs, we will do our best to secure local housing for you. If you spring for the airfare, you can consider the rest of your stay in Manzanillo "on the house."
We like to emphasize that procedures in our clinics may be different than back home. Our Mexican vets run the show. This is important from a cultural sensitivity, as well as professional courtesy, standpoint.
If you have not participated in one of our clinics but wish to speak with a vet or tech from the U.S. or Canada who has, don't hesitate to contact PATA and we'll put you in touch with seasoned veterans. They are great resources and can help answer any doubts or concerns you may have from a medical standpoint.
When contacting PATA about volunteering, it will help our exchange if we could have a bit of a history about you. In your inquiry, please include personal information such as:
- Have you or members of your team taken part in spay/neuter clinics abroad?
- Do any of you have Spanish language skills (not a prerquisite, we have many volunteers with limited language skills who work well in this setting)?
- What amount of time can you commit to, will this be primarily a vacation with a little work, or a working vacation?
