Sweeping Salt Lake City
Do you love meeting new people and helping save dogs and cats? If you do, there’s a brand new volunteer opportunity not to be missed this summer — the Best Friends street team. By answering questions, distributing information about outreach programs and manning Best Friends booths, street team volunteers are pivotal to spreading the Best Friends message and helping to Save Them All®.
Hear, hear
Kim McDaniel, communications manager at Best Friends–Utah, is excited about furthering the ability to save more lives with the help of the street teams. “Street team members are essentially ambassadors of Best Friends,” says Kim. “They work alongside our marketing and events staff, or they may attend some events independently.”
With just a bit of basic training, these volunteers will be well-versed in Best Friends programs and ready to go out into the community to serve as a representative of Best Friends Animal Society–Utah by offering feedback, collaborating with other street team members and exchanging ideas about new avenues for involvement.
“Our goals are to educate the public on Best Friends and our lifesaving programs to save more animals, to facilitate sign-ups for Strut Your Mutt and to have fun,” says Kim. “It's a great chance to be an ambassador for the animals. We don't have many volunteer opportunities like this ― where you really get to interact with the pubic and spread the Best Friends message.”
Street streak
Some of the requirements to join the street teams include having good etiquette and communications skills, being outgoing and willing to speak with strangers, having a good knowledge of Best Friends Animal Society programs and mission, being prompt and reliable, having good transportation and being able to lift 40 pounds.
Street team members will be representing Best Friends Animal Society–Utah and No-Kill Utah (NKUT) at all kinds of events. NKUT is an initiative led by Best Friends Animal Society that brings together passionate individuals, city shelters and a coalition of animal welfare organizations to work toward ending the killing of dogs and cats in shelters in Utah by 2019. Street teams will help Best Friends involve more people in every aspect of animal welfare, like trap/neuter/return (TNR) to save community cats and encouraging adoption of pets, instead of buying companion animals at retail. Street teams are where the rubber meets the road for animals in need.
Fun for everyone
The first event to utilize the street team was the Utah Pride Festival and the parade associated with the event. Street team members made up half of the volunteers on hand to spread the mission of Best Friends. In the future, street team volunteers will be able to sign up a few weeks ahead of such events as Club Kitten, Snowbasin summer concerts, Yappy Hour at Pioneer Park and the Salt Lake City Downtown Farmers Market. Plenty of opportunities exist for folks to get involved and have a blast.
By joining the street team, you’ll be using your naturally outgoing and bubbly personality to help save more animals ― and have a great time doing it.
Get involved
Click here to join a Best Friends street team: volunteers.bestfriends.org Go to Salt Lake City opportunities, and look for Best Friends Utah Street Team.