The Hope Foundation Sri Lanka

To Improve the Welfare and Quality of Life for Dogs and Cats in Sri Lanka.

Mission
To improve the welfare and quality of life of Dogs and Cats in Sri Lanka.
To drastically reduce the number of stray animals living in terrible conditions throughout the whole country.
To provide a safe and loving home and provide the respect that every animals deserves.
To educate and give awareness to the Sri Lankan People on how to respect and look after animals.
To unite all ethnic groups and religions in Sri Lanka as One Nation and to live in peace and harmony with animals, respecting the true culture of the Sri Lankan People.

Overview
The Hope Foundation was established in October 2003 when the owner of Lords Restaurant Complex was constructing the building and came across a stray mother dog hiding under some wood with her 4 puppies. All were very sick as the mother was not strong enough to feed them. We decided to give them all a home and called the mother dog HOPE, this gave us the encouragement and inspiration to start The Hope Foundation.

When reading the blog of the founder Martin Fullerton you will discover that every year the numbers of dogs in our care have increased and our campaigns become larger to reach out to save as many animals lives as possible.

Please read the animals stories and understand the suffering they have undergone and how their lives change when rescued by us. Many of our animals are over 10 years of age living peaceful comfortable happy lives in a place they call home.

Corporate Social Responsibility
Martin Fullerton the Founder of The Hope Foundation said “As the owner of Lords Restaurant Complex in Negombo and traveling to Sri Lanka for over 25 years, as an animal lover it deeply saddened me every day to observe the desperate situations that face all street dogs and cats across the whole country of Sri Lanka. Lords Restaurant has for the last 10 years taken its Corporate Social Responsibility very seriously and funded ALL the work The Hope Foundation carried out”.

As Sri Lanka faced many problems as a third world country and in a 30 year war conflict the government’s funds were obviously focused on the war and the Sri Lankan People not the animals.

We therefore undertook a lifelong commitment to the dogs and cats of Sri Lanka and decided that a positive action plan was needed to be taken to make the necessary changes to help save animal’s lives and educate a culture to respect and care for animals.

How do you change a culture and conditioning of a nation?

How do you get the correct balance of looking after the needs of the Sri Lankan people and the needs of the animals?

We have faced many situations looking at a person laid in the road in desperate need of food and animals that will surely die if not attended to immediately.

Therefore over the last ten years we have faced many challenges as an Investor in the Sri Lankan People and Animals in Sri Lanka. We have focused our time and energy on education. As we believe the only way to improve the lives of animals is to build the respect and understanding of the Sri Lankan People.

The Sri Lankan people are predominantly Buddhist and care and love animals, but find it difficult to feed and care for many animals. They therefore drop puppies and kittens at Buddhist Temples, Churches and especially the fish market in Negombo, hoping that they will find and scavenge for food easier.

Also many foreigners living in Sri Lanka regularly find boxes and bags of animals at their gates and then finally ending up at organizations like The Hope Foundation.

The Humane control of the dog and cat population by spay and neuter programs to stop the animals breeding and multiplying is the only way to reduce the number of animals suffering and the spread of rabies and other diseases.

The world’s economic climate has seriously affected the number of animals we can medically help due to lack of funds especially in the corporate sponsorship and individuals donating money each month.

Owners Animals
We offer FREE Medical care and treatments to Sri Lankan owners of dogs and cats who cannot afford the necessary treatments to look after the welfare of their animals. Many owners’ animals are locked in cages for their entire lives or simply left to run free on the roads facing the same dangers similar to the stray dogs and cats and obviously breeding and increasing the animal population.

We hand out many educational leaflets to animal owners and promote our work through posters and announcements through the media and our vehicles loud public speaker system explaining to the local communities the benefits of our work.

In the Negombo region we have spayed and vaccinated thousands of animals both stray and owners, to control the population and save many animals lives. We encourage hoteliers and restaurants if they face problems with animals approaching guests going inside the hotels looking for food to call our hotline and we then try to re-home where possible or move the animal to a safer location.

Poisoning and Removal of Animals
We face many problems still with animals being treated very badly, poisoned and many occasions where simply animals disappear in large numbers overnight. They are all spayed and vaccinated and fed daily through our feeding campaigns at Lords Restaurant Complex so very sad when all our work has to start again when the next group of animals moves into the empty territory available.

How can YOU Help us?
The Hope Foundation is a nonprofit organization and every donation given goes towards the animals and there are NO administration expenses and all our time is given voluntarily and currently most of the work is funded by Lords Restaurant Complex and donations made by customers from Lords Restaurant Complex and The Hope Foundation Face Book Pages.