When Mr Louis Ng set up a welfare group here to improve the lot of wild animals, he was labelled a fanatic.
Some thought he had a screw loose.
Seven years later, he is no longer a voice in the wilderness.
Acres, short for Animal Concerns Research & Education Society, has 12,000 volunteers and donors, Government funding and - this is crucial - status as an institution of public character, which allows donations to it to be tax-exempt.
Mr Ng, 29, said: 'I was always told, 'You're a small fry' and 'You can't change big organisations'.'
He has not only made the authorities sit up and take notice, he now works with them to nab those in the illegal wildlife trade.
Acres is also building a shelter in Sungei Tengah big enough to house and give medical treatment to at least 400 animals; it even works with other animal welfare groups to give out grants to students for their own animal-protection projects.
His secret: Perseverance.
A baby chimpanzee named Rhamba started it all for him in 2000.
Then a 21-year-old volunteer photographer for the zoo, he said he saw a keeper punch Rhamba in the face to discipline it.
He said: 'She ran to me and hugged me. I knew then that I had to speak on her behalf.'
He tipped off The Straits Times, which reported the incident and started a groundswell of support from animal lovers who successfully campaigned for Rhamba to be returned to her family.
The zoo denied this was a problem, but following the media publicity, it stopped isolating baby chimps from their families.
Adding that zookeepers have come a long way since then, Mr Ng still considers the episode 'the best thing that happened in my life'.
Inspired to do more for animals, he and eight friends started what would become Singapore's first wildlife protection agency, scraping together less than $1,000 in combined savings.
The National University of Singapore-trained biologist was then doing his masters in primate conservation part time with the Oxford Brookes University in Britain, but through sheer will and support from friends, he got Acres up and running on a shoestring in 2001.
He and his team began by fanning out to give talks in schools.
Public education is on-going.
In the past seven years, Mr Ng estimated, Acres has reached out to over 200,000 people about animal abuse and how animals can be better protected.
The group's efforts here have so impressed Law Minister K. Shanmugam that he agreed - on short notice - to speak at Acres' seventh anniversary celebrations last month.
2 comments:
I found the article very interesting and inspiring. I, too, started an animal sanctuary on a showstring (theanimalhousejamaica.org) but five years later am stillon the same shoestring. We have had support and it is growing but it is nowhere near what it needs to be to properly support our 150 plus animals without having crisis moments. And we don't even have one volunteer, let alone 12,000. I would appreciate a contact number or e-mail address so that I can ask the founder what his secret is.
One lve from Jamaica,
Maureen
Sorry...I had to edit it after I saw the errors:)
"I found the article very interesting and inspiring. I, too, started an animal sanctuary on a shoestring (theanimalhousejamaica.org) but five years later am still on the same shoestring. We have had support and it is growing but it is nowhere near what it needs to be to properly support our 150 plus animals without having crisis moments. And we don't even have one volunteer, let alone 12,000. I would appreciate a contact number or e-mail address so that I can ask the founder what his secret is.
One love from Jamaica,
Maureen"
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