See How These Scouts Are Saving Animals

Posted by Reilly on February 05, 2024

Are you a scout looking for ways to help animals, or do you just want some animal rights advocacy inspo? We’ve got you!

Scouts have long been dedicated to building leadership skills and community service—which often involves helping animals (yay!). These organizations provide fantastic opportunities for students to develop character, engage in outdoor activities, and cultivate a sense of community. As someone who was a scout growing up, I can tell you from personal experience how much this helped me understand the importance of supporting my community and nurturing friendships, and how much it contributed to my being a vocal animal rights activist today! 💗

Here are some stories of past collabs between scouts and peta2 and ideas for helping you help animals—whether you’re a scout or just want to make a positive difference!

Free Materials

peta2 can send you free stickers and leaflets on the animal rights topics that you’re passionate about! Educating your community about helping animals is so important and easy to do. Just e-mail us at [email protected] with your full name and mailing address, and specify the materials that interest you. Then you can hand out those materials at an event or in a busy area to get the word out. For example, if you want to encourage people to buy only products not tested on animals, you could share our cruelty-free shopping guides with customers heading into your local beauty supply store.

Girl Scout Ariela Robinson used her Gold Award Project to start an effort called Reducing Animal Stress, through which she organizes shelter drives and gives presentations to other Girl Scout troops on ways they can help animals in shelters. She used our materials at tabling events, including at a Cinco de Mayo event and at Pick Pico Street Fair in California, where she promoted adoption, spaying and neutering, and other companion animal issues.

Project Mentorship

If you need a mentor for a project or just want to pass along interview questions for us to respond to, peta2 can help. 🙂 All you gotta do is send us an e-mail with one to five questions, and we can go from there!

Ena Kawauchiya, a high school senior in California, completed her Girl Scout Gold Award project with help from peta2 staff, who served as her mentor. Using peta2’s resources and free materials, Ena hosted workshops at which she taught her peers  how to make their own cruelty-free products to show them how easy it is to have skin care that doesn’t harm animals and is made out of eco-friendly ingredients!

Fundraising and Advocacy Campaigns

peta2 can guide scouts in advocating for animal rights through fundraising for causes that help animals. Scouts can organize awareness campaigns, petitions, or fundraising events to support local open-admission animal shelters or animal sanctuaries approved by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. Not only can these activities help develop leadership and communication skills, they can also create a lasting impact on your community!

Students Opposing Speciesism (SOS) Calabasas hosted a vegan bake sale to support a local animal sanctuary and raised nearly $300 in just a few hours.

There’s no way we can mention a vegan bake sale here and not talk about vegan Girl Scout cookies—right?! 🤤 Selling vegan Girl Scout Cookies is an excellent way to educate people about animal agriculture. Animals used for food, including cows in the dairy industry and chickens in the egg industry, suffer and die for nonvegan cookies. 💔

Girl Scouts can use their platform to help animals by selling only vegan Girl Scout cookies and sharing our “Guide to Going Vegan” so that people can learn why it’s important to avoid dairy and eggs.

Eighth-grader Brianna Uribe started a PETA fundraiser for her Girl Scout Silver Award because of her love for animals. First, she researched and wrote a paper on animal testing. Then she decided to raise awareness, too: She sold homemade dog biscuits to raise money for PETA’s work to help animals slated for use in experiments, like the 4,000 beagles rescued from Envigo. So inspiring!

Helping Animals in Shelters

Another great way to help animals is to organize a shelter drive for your local open-admission animal shelter or rescue organization. You can collect toys, blankets, or any other supplies needed. This is a fantastic way for scouts to contribute to the well-being of animals in their community. 🐶

• Seventeen-year-old Ryder Peddycoart raised over $500 to make beds for dogs, which he donated to an animal rescue organization in Baldwin, Wisconsin, as part of his service project to become an Eagle Scout. He and 14 other Boy Scouts spent two and a half hours making the beds using fabric and PVC pipes—and provided 23 animals with these cozy creations to help make them comfortable as they awaited their new homes.
• Eagle Scout Chance Call built 150 beds for dogs in a Utah animal shelter. He raised over $3,000 in donations for supplies to make the beds, which took about 120 hours to build with help from friends. Chance was awarded a Hero to Animals Award by peta2 and PETA for his compassionate efforts.
• Girl Scout Troop 13179 in Mooresville, North Carolina, partnered with Future Fashion Designers to construct 40 beds for animals in local shelters in honor of National Pet Month (May). PETA awarded the troop for its hard work and dedication to helping animals in shelters, who seriously need our help, because, right now, around 70 million dogs and cats in the U.S. are homeless.

Actions like these provide the perfect opportunity to advocate for fostering animals, adopting instead of buying them, and spaying and neutering—with peta2’s educational leaflets! 🤗

Virtual Presentations

Want to bring peta2 to your troop meeting? 👀 E-mail us at [email protected] and we can schedule a free virtual presentation on an animal rights topic of your choice! A few presentations we currently offer include caring for companion animals, effective animal rights advocacy, how to help animals through your everyday choices, and how living a vegan lifestyle helps the planet—just to name a few!

Speaking Up

Sometimes it’s necessary to challenge tradition and advocate for change. If your troop is considering participating in an activity that harms animals or the environment, you can make a difference! One example of this is to replace fishing (i.e., putting hooks through animals’ mouths, causing them to suffer) with “trash fishing.” 🌎 Trash fishing helps animals and the planet. It involves pulling garbage that can harm wildlife out of bodies of water, while also encouraging scouts to spend quality time together.

Now you know how scouts can take a significant step toward creating a more compassionate and ethical future by helping animals in lots of creative ways! Together, peta2 and scouts can cultivate a generation of compassionate leaders who strive to create a better world for animals and inspire others to do the same. 🌟