About DSWA

India is the second largest brick producer of clay fired bricks, accounting for more than 10 percent of global production. India is estimated to have around 140,000 brick kilns, producing about 240-260 billion bricks annually and employing about 10 million workers. Donkeys, mules and horses are commonly used in brick making industry in India to carry bricks either as pack animals or for pulling carts and provide the main source of income for a large majority of their owners and handlers. Working equines in brick kilns suffer from extensive and serious welfare issues caused by a number of factors related to the setting they work in as well as poor husbandry and management practices. Equines are often overworked, overburdened and mistreated with inadequate food, shelter and healthcare. The marginalization and vulnerability of the animals’ owners and handlers also lead to their beating and ruthless treatment.
The key activities in the brick kiln projects are:

• Operate mobile clinics to carry out welfare assessment, health care provision and preventative measures like vaccination, hoof care, better harnessing to prevent wounds
• Community Development and empowerment involves education and awareness on husbandry practices, skill development, enhancing their livelihood, income generating activities
• Skill development / hands on trainings for the equine owners and CAHW’s (Community Based Anima Health Workers) to ensure basic health care provision is available within the communities
• Improve infrastructure availability in brick kilns i.e., shelter, toilets, clean water, creche (playschool / anganwadi for the children), electricity through solar panels.
• System strengthening involves providing trainings and building capacity of the animal health professionals to ensure the working equine owners can access effective animal healthcare systems that is affordable leading to improved animal welfare. Working with Veterinary Universities to integrate equine health and welfare in the veterinary curriculum so that the new graduates able to deliver quality equine healthcare in their communities that are accessible and affordable.
• Advocacy involves working with policy makers, other NGO’s to highlight the importance of welfare of working equids and their contribution to the economy and Sustainable Development Goals.
• Environment protection involves awareness sessions to conserve water, cleanliness, waste disposal and proper sanitation, use better fuel for firing the bricks, tree plantation etc

The other important aspect of our work is to reach out to animals in need when natural disaster strikes like floods, droughts, earthquakes, heat wave and cyclones. Our aim is to provide timely rescue and relief operations for the animals that are directly affected by conflict or natural disasters by working in collaboration with local administration, Government Animal Husbandry department, National Disaster Management Agencies, Other NGO’s and various stakeholders. DSWA had carried out relief operations in Uttarakhand during the flash floods in 2013 and Maharashtra during the floods in 2019.

Human-donkey interactions (Donkey facilitated learning or Donkey assisted therapy) is a great opportunity to bring people and donkey together and bring about life-enhancing benefits for both. A donkey’s gentle and affectionate nature brings a calming effect over all who they come into contact with. Donkeys especially enjoy human interactions, and this helps to lift people’s spirits. Donkey therapy provides a unique experience for people experiencing physical or mental distress. The visible lifting of a person’s spirit during donkey petting is typically immediate and significant. Some people have indicated their interaction with our donkeys has been one of their life’s highlights. This program will involve senior citizens residing in old age homes, physically and mentally challenged special children and traumatized soldiers from army / police as beneficiaries.

Equine fairs are one of the important interventions wherein it gives us an opportunity to assess the welfare status of huge congregation of equines in a short period of time, to train and educate equine owners and other service providers. The animal traders / equine owners come from far away distances to buy and sell their animals. In the equine fairs, thousands of animals are brought for trading for 3-10 days period on certain time of the year during auspicious religious occasions or festivals.

We work closely with the fair organisers, District administration, Government Animal husbandry department and various stakeholders for improving the infrastructure availability within the fair grounds like isolation units, clean water and feed, shade, hygiene and dead animal disposal, ramp for loading and unloading animals. End life issues is also a great concern as old and crippled animals are traded and even transported illegally to neighbouring Nepal which makes these animals lead a cruel life of working until death. DSWA had been working in number of fairs across India especially in Barabanki fair, Bateshwar, Garhmukteshwar in UP, Vautha fair in Gujarat, Beri fair in Haryana, Madhi and Jejuri fair in Maharashtra etc for the past 5 years as per the guidelines in ‘Equine fair protocol’.

We also work in partnership with International organisations to set up projects in South Asian regions. In Nepal, we helped Animal Nepal an animal welfare organisation to set up “Working Equine Outreach Programme to help the equines working in the Brick kilns and mountainous regions”. In Sri Lanka we have helped Bridging Lanka a Development Organisation to set up “Feral donkey Welfare and Management program in Mannar” in Northern part of Sri Lanka. In Bangladesh, we had helped Helen Keller International to set up a Livestock integrated livelihood program called “M2W2 project – Moving Markets Work for Women” to benefit the Chakma tribal women in Chittagong Hilly Tracts.

System strengthening involves providing trainings and building capacity of the animal health professionals to ensure the working equine owners can access effective animal healthcare systems that is affordable leading to improved animal welfare. Working with Veterinary Universities to integrate equine health and welfare in the veterinary curriculum so that the new graduates able to deliver quality equine healthcare in their communities that are accessible and affordable.

• Equine owners: build the capacity of the equine owning families by providing hands on trainings and empower the communities through compassion, respect, trainings and education.
• CAHW’s (Community Based Animal Health Workers): Identify and develop CAHW’s in all our projects as per competency framework. Improve their competencies on primary first aid, early disease diagnosis and preventive care regarding donkeys / mules.
• Identify and train community-based farriers, cart / harness makers for long-lasting impact on service availability for the communities
• Training for the Vet students and Animal Health Professionals: i.e., Government vets, Animal Health Assistants and private vets

Women empowerment involves building the capacity by providing hands on trainings and empowering the communities through compassion, respect, trainings and education. Income generating activities both individual and group level by establishing self-help groups to produce equine specific materials a a source of income, Identify proactive women from within the communities and develop them as CAHW’s (Community based Animal HealthWorkers) to take care of basic needs of their equines and to represent as ambassadors for animal welfare, Skill development / hands on trainings are given to produce good quality harness materials i.e., back protectors, blinkers, head collarr, lead rope etc that will be sustainable and help us solve the harness related issues.

DSWA conducts Health and awareness camps in the pilgrimage sites i.e., Katra in Jammu and Palitana in Gujarat to improve the welfare of equines working in these sites and also to improve the livelihood of the communities that own them. The program also includes working for the Human welfare (communities that work in the shrine), programmes for the youth and children, women empowerment through self-help groups and microfinancing and environment protection. We work with the Shrine board, District administration, Government Animal husbandry department and various stakeholders for improving the welfare of animals and human working in the pilgrimage sites.

DSWA operates a donkey farm / shelter at Chharodi in Ahmedabad which has two sections- one serves as a sanctuary and other as farm clinic cum training centre. The sanctuary aspect houses old and crippled donkeys that were rescued and inherited to be looked after for the rest of their lives. The sanctuary has truly become a safe haven for animals who at one time were all victims of cruelty inflicted on them by people. The other section serves as a clinic for other sick or injured donkeys that are kept and attended to while they get well. In addition, the clinic serves as a Training Centre for others, ranging from donkey owners to vets, who come to learn about various aspects of donkey welfare: health, harness, feeding, treatment of injuries, etc. The trainees come from different welfare organisation within India and has now slowly developed into an International hub for trainings and has welcomed people from different organisations from Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Our aim is to maintain the farm clinic / shelter and demonstrate the standards in such a way that it is looked upon as a model shelter for donkey care and management and Animal Welfare as a whole. We have around 50 donkeys living in our farm clinic and members of the public are welcome to visit!

We carry out non-invasive research projects, case studies in collaboration with animal welfare and humanitarian organisations, research institutes with an aim to improve the welfare of working equines, to assess the welfare status of equines and demonstrate the economic importance of working equids in household livelihoods and their contribution to Sustainable Development Goals. We have so far supported two research projects- “Valuing donkeys face to face – “Investigating the role and value of donkeys in Indian brick kilns” and “Role of local pharmacies in health delivery and its effectiveness”

In India, the ongoing devastating Covid-19 pandemic has not only affected the health of people, their livelihood but also the livestock due to lack of accessibility to inputs and care during this crisis period. Among all, the situation is worst for the working equines and their dependent poor communities. Our team conducted a few focus group discussions with the donkey owning communities and found that these communities earned only 50% of the income in the brick kiln season and are facing unemployment due to lockdown. Since most of them come from marginalised communities they have little to fall back on and seldom have the bargaining power to receive any benefit from the government. Due to the above crisis situation, DSWA carried out relief work for the affected donkeys and donkey owning communities in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar Districts in Gujarat and Solapur district in Maharashtra. The team provided treatments, follow up medications, distributed feed to the affected donkeys and hygiene kit for the donkey owners containing Face masks, Anti-septic soap and Hand sanitisers.