Empowering Progress – Our 25 by 2025 Year Update
July 2nd, 2024
By Katie Campbell, President and CEO
Just last month, we held our “Empowering Progress – 25 by 2025 Year Update” call where we were excited to announce that the percentage of pet-friendly domestic violence (DV) shelters in the U.S. continues to increase!
With any movement, there’s a starting point, and we’re thrilled to share that since 2012, the percentage has grown from roughly 3%, to now just over 19%. We’ve got some work to do to get to 25% by the end of 2025, but we continue to be inspired by the progress, and we’re committed to seeing this goal through to completion.
How have we gotten to this point? Truthfully, we’ve got the easy part – supporting DV organizations by providing technical assistance in creating pet housing programs and through our Safe Housing grants program. The hard work is done each and every day by those 347 organizations across the country who are keeping DV survivors and their pets safe and together.
How many more pet-friendly DV shelters do we need to get to 25%? As of May of this year, we need 109 shelters to become pet friendly! We’ll get there by continuing to connect with, train, and support as many organizations across the country as we can because we know that this kind of programming is critical for both pets and their people.
Did you know that 97% of DV survivors said that keeping their pet with them factored into their decision to seek safety? And that 72% of survivors didn’t even know that pet housing programs existed?
We’ve got work to do, alongside our partners at PetSmart Charities, Purina, and Greater Good Charities’ Rescue Rebuild – but you can join us in empowering progress by visiting 25 by 2025.org!
