Scholarship
The Haynes Scholarship for the Advancement of Animal Welfare
Once a permanent endowment of $20,000 is in place, scholarships of $1,000 per year will be made available to support UBC Animal Welfare graduate students whose research helps reduce animal suffering. The aim of this research is to improve our understanding of how the lives of animals are influenced by such factors as human behavior, policy, education and the law.
The awards will be offered to graduate students in the UBC Animal Welfare Program and to graduate students working on interdisciplinary degrees with the Animal Welfare Program, with preference to candidates whose research is directed at advancing the interests of animals through education, regulation, the media and the legal system.
The award has been established in memory of Diane’s adopted cat, named Mouse, who demonstrated the transformative power of the human-animal bond.
Awards will be made on the recommendation of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, in consultation with the Faculty of Graduate Studies. First awards will be made available for the 2007-2008 Winter Session.
Goal: $20,000
Amount raised as of April 17, 2008: $6,236 (+ donations pending in June)
To Contribute:
Contact the UBC Animal Welfare Program / Director of Development / 604.822.8910 / lfs.development@landfood.ubc.ca
Or CLICK HERE to donate online (under “Select Your Gift Designation” choose “I prefer to donate to:” and type in “Haynes Scholarship for the Advancement of Animal Welfare.”
All donations to the Haynes Scholarship for the Advancement of Animal Welfare are tax deductible.
Reasons to Contribute:
- You believe in the need for legal and regulatory change for animals.
- You believe in the power of education to change minds.
- You want to give to an institution with a proven track record for improving animal welfare on a large scale.
- You want to help create lasting change.
- you want to be part of a permanent legacy for animals.
- An animal has changed your life, and you wish to return the gift.
Click here to read more about projects currently being undertaken by graduate students in the UBC Animal Welfare Program.
About the Honoree — Mouse Haynes (by Diane Haynes)
In 1994, I was one of a group of students who journeyed with a Shamanic healer to find our medicine animals — animals who, according to Native tradition, walk our path with us, guide us, and share with us the unique powers they possess.
The drumming, the meditating, the visioning and the journeying led me to … a mouse. The smallest of the small. Everybody’s prey animal. I was profoundly disappointed and, frankly, a little embarrassed. Mid-journey and anxious to get back to reality, I summoned enough curiosity to ask of the mouse, impolitely, what possible use it could be to me.
“I am not small,” came the answer, reverberating like a gong inside my head. “But I can show you how to protect the small.”
A year later, I met a tiny grey kitten with enormous ears, a wisp of a tail and an imperious squeak. I adopted him, and named him Mouse. Mouse was a one-hander, a puny ball of fur that fit in my palm with room to spare. He slept between my ear and my shoulder, climbed me like cheap curtains to get to his food if I was slow to set it on the floor, and fit neatly between an elevator door and the shaft wall with room to turn around and emerge again head first. He used up his first life with that trick.
The crack of an egg could bring him from nowhere for a bit of yolk; he reveled in the smells of his garden from his favorite window ledge; he loved a quiet song sung just for him, to snuggle under the bedcovers and rest his head on my pillow, to ease my workload by stepping into the middle of it and settling in.
Christmas was his favorite time of year, with its pine boughs and the crackling paper and the whole family gathered together in the house. He was a prodigious hunter in his heyday, and it was with the rare quarry he spared that I made my first trips to the wildlife rescue center that is now the focus of Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series.
You may have noticed that when you learn a new word, suddenly you hear it everywhere, as though your ears have been opened a little bit wider. Loving Mouse opened my eyes to all animals — to the fact that they have needs and wants and feelings like we do, and to the suffering they endure through inadequate legal protection, factory farming and needless experimentation. Mouse led me to the wildlife rescue center, to UBC’s Animal Welfare Program, and to volunteer with the SPCA. He became the reason for my writing, and my inspiration to make our world a better place for animals. He led me to learn how to protect the small.
At age five, Mouse was diagnosed with a serious heart condition that meant daily medications and frequent trips to clinics for the rest of his life. At the time, our vet guessed he had about a year to live. Luckily, she didn’t tell him that. He lived another six years, and blessed us every day.
I promised him before he died that I would do everything I could to make sure the gifts he gave me and the things he taught me would live beyond us both.
With your help, this scholarship will be a powerful legacy for the animals who’ve touched all our lives, and a benefit for all those to come.