I'm turning over blog duties to a wonderful volunteer, Arturo, that we are very lucky to have at Amazon c.a.r.e.s.  For those of you with an interest, I wrote a personal blog entry about my New Year's Eve holiday at my Yahoo! 360 blog.

Hi everybody,

My name is Arturo Pardini, I’m Italian, and I have been volunteering here at Amazon Community Animal Rescue, Education & Safety (c.a.r.e.s.), Iquitos, for approximately 6 weeks now. Molly Mednikow, Director and Founder of this charity, has asked me to write down a few lines about my experience, which I am doing with great pleasure.

It is the very first time for me to be carrying on a volunteer work with animals, and I am finding this new adventure very interesting and rewarding. I had worked previously in other non-profit, charitable institutions in Cusco, mainly with children,, homeless and born to young single mothers. That was my first time volunteering in South America and therefore the first time also to get closely in touch with a certain kind of - sometimes rough – reality.

Being a volunteer in an animal – rescue institute is in many ways a similar experience. Like homeless children, stray dogs and other animals living in the streets, once rescued and given shelter, need most of all a lot of love and affection. Most of the time they are severely traumatized, scared, and have developed a marked pattern of passive/aggressive behavior. It definitely takes a whole lot of patience, as well as tact and carefulness, in order to regain their lost confidence in human beings.

Working with dogs, one quickly learns how deeply affectionate and love-giving these creatures can be. It’s amazing to see how eager they are to show you constantly their kind nature and their warm heart. Despite all the traumatic experiences they’ve gone through, they are able to rapidly overcome them and prove to be wonderful, generous, always rewarding pets.

It takes so little to make them happy: a stroll in the outdoors, or just a small tidbit of food can lift their spirit and put back a sparkle of joy inside them.

I think I can say that the “ raising – consciousness” task carried on by an association such as Amazon c.a.r.e.s. in a place like Iquitos is absolutely priceless, since it is true that over here people are generally not used to taking care of stray animals at all, and in this sense the institution is setting a positive example for the whole local population .

Also, the job all the volunteers and the employees are realizing in terms of sanitization, by spaying and sterilizing a considerable amount of stray pets is proving to be of really enormous importance in a city continually under ecological threat, due to its poor environmental awareness combined with the extreme heat.

I think I can say I have to be sincerely thankful to Molly and her project for having granted me such a great opportunity and I truly hope I’ll be able to stay here for a while longer and keep offering my positive contribution to Amazon c.a.r.e.s. and all the homeless, abandoned pets of Iquitos.