Last journal entry of the trimester

The first quote that most heavily resonates with my reasoning for choosing my CAS project is “People protect what they love.” Jacques Cousteau. Animal suffering at all levels has always brought up a lot of empathy in me, since I was little I’ve always loved animals and as I grew older I found a lot of devotion in fighting for their rights and protecting them from the cruelty of humans. Growing up I would see and learn about all these mistreated animals in our communities and was never able to do anything, so I always knew that when I started CAS I would use it as a way to change that. My love and respect for animals led me to create this project, which stems into different things like spreading information around factory farms in which animals are subjected to inhumane conditions. Overall my entire project connects to this love and appreciation for animals and nature, which I believe being from Costa Rica cultivated. 

The second quote that heavily resonates with my reasoning is “I always wondered why somebody didn’t do something about that. Then I realized, I am somebody.” 

Since I was little, seeing all the street animals or hearing stories about mistreated animals, abusive homes etc always made me extremely sad and hopeless, as I felt useless. Everytime I would encounter a street dog who is always malnourished and in need of help I couldn’t do anything as I didn’t have the resources and wasn’t allowed to bring them home. When I learnt about CAS I realized this was my opportunity to be able to finally help even if it is just a few lives. 

In the more recent years I’ve also become very interested and concerned with climate change as many others my age are, and one thing I’ve learnt is that our diet is one of the easiest ways to reduce our impact. Personally I first switched my diet away from animal products because of my love and respect for animals but as I learnt more about all the negative effects of today’s industrial farming I realized more people should know about this. In recent years I have been pretty vocal about their rights and the impacts on the environment in my personal life, and am interested in developing this in the future. CAS made me realize I could do something about it now and try to spread this important information that isn’t nearly talked about enough. 

This project is my small way of trying to help for now. 

After undertaking some aspects of my project the quote that resonates with me the most is “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” Charles Dickens

As my fundraiser is over and I’m diving deeper into IB and understanding the workload, I’m realizing the limitations of my project. In my mind I started out with much more ambitious plans and unrealistic goals, but as I’m making this project tangible I’ve sort of lowered my expectations. This quote really resonates because although I might not be able to help 100 dogs and build a better shelter I can still have an impact on many animals’ lives and do smaller things like get them toys and beds. Even if I can only make a few animals’ lives better as the quote says it won’t be useless. I find this very motivating because it became sort of disappointing when I realized these limitations as it felt like there wasn’t much point in putting this much effort into something If i wasn’t going to make much impact. 

At this moment for CAS I feel like I’m in a good place. I’m happy that my fundraiser, which I think is the most stressful part, is over. I’m really excited to start working with the vet and put a system in place for people to be able to report animals in need. At the same time I’m kind of nervous that I won’t be able to put as much time as I’d like to into this as I do other schoolwork, or that just overall CAS will take up a large amount of my time. I’m also worried about needing much more funding. 

Lastly a quote that does inspire me to do things differently is “You gave me your time, the most important gift of all.” Dan Zandra. I think I’ve been very focused on how I could build my project but this makes me realize that giving my time and helping around the shelter or vet can be just as impactful in the lives of these animals. They need people to help walk them and play with them, there’s puppies and larger dogs that are there for weeks or months. Having someone to take care of them and give them a break from being in their cages is almost as important as getting them off the street.