Contest for journalists covering animal welfare [Ukraine]

ALL-UKRAINIAN COMPETITION OF JOURNALISTIC MATERIALS

AN ANIMAL FRIENDLY COUNTRY

The Save Pets of Ukraine initiative, with the support of the Kormotekh company and the Internews-Ukraine NGO, initiates the All-Ukrainian competition for journalistic materials “A Country Friendly to Animals”.

All-Ukrainian and regional media journalists who write on environmental, social and surrounding business topics, highlight trends, activities of animal protection organizations, shelters and animal volunteers are invited to participate.

The purpose of the contest is to remind that the topic of humane treatment of four-legged animals is always timely and is a marker of society’s maturity. The Kormotech company (a national producer of pet food) has been promoting the culture of responsible human-animal companionship for many years and is working to transform the attitude towards animals throughout Eastern Europe.

With the start of a full-scale war, photos and videos of Ukrainians taking pets out of shelling, evacuating, protecting, feeding, hiding in shelters, impress and move people every day. After the terrorist attack on the Kakhovskaya HPP, all the following days, footage of saving every life, even the smallest one, became a powerful beam of energy that does not allow one to despair. We want to keep this momentum going. We want the voice of Ukrainian animals suffering from war not to disappear from the radar. On the contrary, in the conditions of ecocide committed by the Russians, it sounded even more powerful in the world and in Ukraine.

To draw public attention to this topic, it is important to tell the stories of animals and people who care for four-legged friends during war.

Terms of the competition:

• Publish* media material on one of the topics proposed by the organizers in the period from June 1 to September 1, 2023.
• Fill out the registration form and send a link to the published material and/or a file with it.

The application deadline is September 1, 2023 inclusive.

According to the topics and features of the works that will be considered by the expert jury, the organizers will select several winners and award them with monetary awards: the grand prize (40,000 UAH), 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places for several participants (20, 15, 10,000 UAH, respectively), as well as a number of special awards of 5,000 UAH each.

The winners will be awarded on September 20, 2023. The time and place of the award ceremony will be announced later.

The general partner of the competition is the Kormotech company.

The information partner of the competition is Internews-Ukraine NGO.

Topics for materials:

• How animal shelters work and survive in Ukraine in war conditions.
• Four-legged hostages of war: the impact of full-scale war on the ecosphere and animal welfare in Ukraine.
• Terrorist attack on Kakhovskaya HPP and Russian ecocide in Ukraine.
• Man, animal, environment: best practices for equal coexistence.
• How the animal protection infrastructure works in Ukraine: people, chains, solutions.
• I can help: how to become pet-friendly and help improve the situation of animals. A guide for everyone.
• Stories of devotion: saving four-legged friends (and their people) in Ukraine.
• Animals and corporate social responsibility: animal protection initiatives of Ukrainian business.

The Kormotech company has long and systematically taken care of projects to improve the welfare of Ukrainian cats and dogs. Over 20 years of work, the team has implemented 14+ social projects to help animals: humane education course for schoolchildren “Little Prince”, annual All-Ukrainian action “Take a dog to work”, professional training school for veterinarians Optimeal Expert, hotline and online service of free veterinary care Optimeal Expert 9100, Look 4 Paws adoption platform, global chain of assistance to Ukrainian four-legged animals affected by the war Save Pets of Ukraine, which was preceded by the project “Don’t leave us in ATO” from 2014.

Kormotech’s social mission is to change the attitude towards animals not only in Ukraine, but also throughout Eastern Europe: to encourage people to treat four-legged friends not as property, but as full-fledged companions and family members.

“We develop a culture of responsible care and quality coexistence with animals. We start with ourselves — our office in Lviv was the first in Ukraine to encourage employees to bring dogs to work so that four-legged friends could spend more time with their people. 85% of our colleagues are pet parents — they have a cat or a dog, or both. Kormotech works a lot in this direction socially — from helping in the war (rescue and feed), to building such a culture and infrastructure where animal homelessness is impossible as a phenomenon. The company provides these projects with fodder, administration, promotion and expense coverage. But the main thing is that we took on the mission of being the voice of Ukrainian animals in the war and not letting this voice disappear from the radar. Humanity is always on time, and Ukrainians have proven that we are the most humane nation in the world.“, says Kateryna Kovalyuk , director of reputation management and corporate social responsibility at Kormotech.

To prepare the materials, participants can use the selection of useful resources collected by the Kormotech team and Save Pets of Ukraine. You can familiarize yourself with the materials by downloading the media kit of the competition .

Also, the organizers are ready to provide comprehensive consulting support regarding the selection and elaboration of the topic.

The competition is taking place for the first time, but the organizers plan to continue it.

Contacts of the organizers: Anastasia Stolyar, Kormotech external communications manager, +38(096) 4184102, [email protected] .