19-year-old opens free dispensary for animals

Sai Vignesh M has been running Almighty Animal Care Trust from 2017. Through this, he rescues animals and gets them vaccinated. Recently, he found that treatment of animals in even government dispensaries are not free and so he decided to open one where animals will be looked after for free.

“I started feeding stray animals along with my grandfather when I was 7 and later began to rescue them from the streets. We then set up the trust and used the funds to conduct animal rescue operations, vaccination and animal camps for free,” said Sai Vignesh.

“Some time ago, when I visited a government medical dispensary, I realized that they charge for their services, so I decided to open a free dispensary. We also have separate shelters for dogs and cats,” he added.

Vignesh plans to conduct free medical camps in the city soon to spread awareness about it.

So far, the 19-year-old has rescued 300 animals and vaccinated more than 900. To support his initiative, the youth has raised Rs 5 lakh from the people and borrowed money from other animal rescuers, and also works part time as a web developer.

He is currently raising funds to purchase the required equipment to conduct camps. “We are planning to sell our house in Tirunelvelli, so that the funds will be put as corpus fund to maintain the monthly expenses of the sanctuary. At present, we have veterinarians who volunteer for the cause and so we don’t pay them. Maybe in the future, we may have to bring in other experts and pay them accordingly,” said Vignesh.