At OSCAS, the shelter is managed mostly by volunteers, whether it involves looking after the animals themselves or organising events and contributing to their social platforms. If you have kids 15 years old and older, but younger than 18 years old, you can volunteer together in three different categories: education and outreach, events and fundraising, and PR and media. The details for each role are as follows:

Education and outreach:

• Promote responsible handling of animals via social media
• Collaborate with community centres to advocate for kindness to animals
• Raise awareness and correct misconceptions about stray dogs

Events and fundraising:

• Organise and plan events for OSCAS
• Raise funds and promote adoption and sponsorships for OSCAS

PR and Media (16 years and above):

• Design materials to be used for publicity
• Create videos
• Photograph dogs at the various events (our favourite!)
• Drawing and illustrating
• Managing social media platforms

Not only are these tasks suitable for teens, but they will also give them exposure that will help them greatly further along in life.

As an adult, while your children tackle the above tasks, you can take part in animal welfare. You will be required to walk and rehabilitate them, shower them, and monitor them to ensure they are healthy.

Find out more here.

LKP cares for the chronically ill and injured cats – including senior cats that deserve lots of love! They take in cats that are no longer able to live as strays and take care of them to ensure that they live comfortably.

Children above 14 years of age can help out the animal welfare group. As volunteers, you and your kids will be tasked with various tasks such as cleaning the litter, providing medication to the cats and dressing wounds, and providing them with food when dinner time arrives.

Currently, the group is looking for long-term volunteers who can commit for at least six months. So if you are looking for a way to contribute to animal welfare in Singapore with your kids and plan to do so for the long run, LKP is worth checking out!

Sign up here.

A cause ran entirely by volunteers, CAS is looking for volunteers who are looking to make a difference. You and your kids can be part of the publicity and events team.

In the publicity team, you can contribute through the photography of the dogs and events, designing posters, and by helping with sponsorship write-ups. For the last one, you and your children will be required to visit the shelter every once every two weeks in order to better familiarise yourself with the canines.

For those interested in being in the events team, you can help by handling dogs and promoting adoption during their adoption drives. You can also help by selling merchandise during events.

If your kids are above 16 and you are all free to volunteer during the weekends, you can also sign up to be an adoption centre volunteer. Some of the tasks you will have to perform include cleaning the shelter, walking the dogs, and walking dogs. CAS also offers VIA hours, so it will be a good opportunity for your kids to take part in a cause they are interested in whilst filling up their hours.

Find out more here.

You won’t find any furry creatures here. If turtles and tortoises are more your’s or your kids’ thing, then The Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum is a great place to volunteer with your children.

With a minimum age requirement of 16 years old, volunteers at the museum will have to undergo a five-day training programme that can be spaced out over five weeks. During the programme, you will learn how to prepare food for the turtles, note the individual appetite of the turtles, clean aquariums, conduct routine checks on the turtles, and you can also conduct educational tours (optional).

After your training, the museum will award you with a certificate according to how much you and your children are willing to commit to the museum.

Find out more here.

It must first be established that the CWS is not a shelter, so you won’t find any shelter work with it. However, the volunteers working together with it ensure that community cats stay safe – and you and your kids can easily help out!

This includes practicing responsible cat feeding, ensuring all the cats are sterilised, growing the network of caregivers and helping to forge good relationships with the HDB management, and reporting cases of animal abuse to the relevant authorities. These all contribute to creating a safe environment for the community cats and ensuring their well-being.

Not only that, but you and your children will be making sure the cats are well-fed and will slowly build your own bonds with them.

You can also help out by selling merchandise from CWS at schools or your workplace and even through organising talks and events.

Find out more here.

ASD believes that even the smallest actions help. So while children under the age of 21 can’t help out in the shelter, there are other ways you and your kids can make a difference.

As the group is totally self-funded, fundraising helps them to continue helping animals in need. So as a fundraiser volunteer, you and your teens will have to brainstorm for innovative ways to engage the public and get them to contribute to the cause. If you have an artistic streak, you can even come up with designs to be used on merchandise and sold for funds.

If you are more suited for media roles, you can design brochures, pamphlets, exhibition panels, and more to promote responsible pet ownership and adoption. You can also find different ways to get the message across to the public such as through video clips, teasers, and more.

Find out more here.

Project LUNI specialises in rehoming and caring for street cats in Singapore. The volunteers and members feed the cats in a responsible manner, provide medical care for them, and conduct trap-neuter-return runs to help sterilise them (after which they are returned to where they were trapped).

As volunteers, you and your children can be part of the events and fundraising team where you will organise events, you can create products for Project LUNI to sell, you can design brochures and leaflets, and create social media content for the group.

Sign up more here.

At SOSD, the lives of all dogs matter. The group is against the culling of all animals, want to eliminate abandonment, and promote better welfare for dogs.

There are six different teams you choose from, and you can join up to three. They are: team kennel, team transport, team digital, team fundraising, team design, and team social media.

SOSD is the best place for you and your children to get hands-on with dogs, whether they are puppies or senior dogs.

Sign up here.

A version of this story first appeared on Young Parents.

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