Our team is one thing above all: strong!
We are such a diverse group that we can for-tunately cover many different areas. This was not consciously planned, but it works great. It makes us a very successful team that collabo-rates almost perfectly. Our versatility helps immensely, because if you want to do effective animal protection work, you can’t get very far with just love of animals.
Our active members represent the ethnic composition of the population here in Mani very well, where Greeks live together with Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Dutch, English and Albanians.
This is good and necessary in order to reach as many residents as possible without communicating with them as “foreigners”. But what is actually much more important is that we unite so many different talents, so many different lifestyles.
There is the woman who, by nature, turns night into day and is therefore happy to do the night journeys to Athens airport. Because many flights on which our charges leave Greece take off early in the morning, we often have to leave here around midnight. There is the man who is wonderful with saw, hammer and screwdriver and is always on hand when awnings need to be installed for the dogs, or a gutter to catch the rainwater. There is the woman who, with infinite patience, talks to possible adopters on the phone and, in the best case, also books the flight for our four-legged protégé; but there is also the man who spends hours and hours in our enclosure playing with the dogs and giving them all the love he has to give.
And there is the woman who doesn’t mind driving an animal to Kalamata every week, 40 kilome-tres away, so that it can be neutered or spayed, even if the stressed-out animal is vomitting its stomach and intestinal contents all over the place due to the winding and moun-tainous route. Or the man who is revolutionis-ing our bookkeeping by introducing Excel spreadsheets and lists that provide a total overview. I should also mention the woman who is worlds better at communicating with dogs than with people and will take all the dogs who are labelled as difficult into her care. Or the man who actually works on building sites, but with full commitment builds an enclosure for a previously caged dog in the evening hours.
Equally important is the commitment of two women. One is at home in Berlin, the other is constantly on the road all over the world. They feed the social media and in this way contrib-ute decisively to our being able to find places for our charges.
We should also not forget the “cat faction”, consisting primarily of an English couple who look after around 60 cats, day in, day out, and also provide them with the best possible medical care, over and above the provision of food..
We are a strong and successful team, we donate our time and services free of charge and are always grateful for new members who want to contribute their special talents. Yes, and especially for YOUNG newcomers who will continue our work when we, the first MIAO generation, will no longer have so much energy at our disposal.
If you are interested, please contact us at info@miao-mani.com or use our contact form.