The WAG Centre Build Campaign

Dear supporters, 

This is our very first report for our WAG Centre Build Campaign fundraising page! You are receiving this report because you donated to this fundraiser during last December’s Giving Tuesday campaign - THANK YOU, merci, and murakoze for donating to this important project. If you didn’t receive an email from us at the time of donating, we are so sorry – the thank you note system had not been set up on our end. So here's our long overdue (but still heartfelt!) thank you.

We set up this fundraising page separate to our existing operational fundraising page because we wanted to have a separate place where people can donate specifically to the development of our new WAG shelter, or ‘Centre’ as we’ve been calling it. As you probably know, we are faced with having to move out of our current shelter in Kabuga because of road access issues and the expropriation of the land where we’re currently based. While we’ve been managing for the last 10 months with no road access to our shelter, it has severely impacted our work in many ways and we’re now looking to construct our own Centre - with dog housing, teaching and office space, and a small clinic - which is what we are now fundraising for! 

Your donations over the Giving Tuesday campaign were vital for us to get the ball rolling on this. Thanks to you, we hired a surveyor to do a topographical survey which was the first main step we needed to take before creating designs for the Centre and seeking permission for construction from the City of Kigali and district and local authorities. The topographical report has been helpful for us to work with our architect and start to plan out what the Centre will look like! 

Now, we are working on some preliminary designs and creating a project brief for stakeholders with information about the Centre and rationale. This will also be useful as we seek to expand our fundraising efforts to bigger funders and charitable foundations. 

We are so grateful for your support in taking our first small but meaningful steps to realising our dream - our very own Centre, on our very own land. Having this will make WAG so much more sustainable and allow us to expand, run more projects and ultimately help more dogs. 

We look forward to sharing the project brief with you when it’s ready! In the meantime, we’d love for you to help spread the word about this fundraising campaign. We are Rwanda’s only dog shelter, and we can’t expand and achieve our dreams without more people supporting us. It really is a team effort! Please consider sharing amongst family, friends, colleagues and fellow dog lovers, and if anyone would like more information on the project or how they can help, please get in touch at info@wagrwanda.org . 

Thank you once again for your support. We are all so grateful!