SAWA 2009

The Santorini Animal Welfare Association – SAWA is a non-governmental, non-profit making organization, founded in 1992 by active and devoted animal lovers of the island. Its purpose is to protect the island’s animals - ranging from stray dogs and cats to abandoned donkeys and mules, care for their wellbeing and become an advocate to their rights.

In close cooperation with the Municipality of Thira and the local vet, SAWA insures that a great majority of stray animals are neutered and spayed, vaccinated, treated in case of injury, disease or poisoning and if possible re-homed in Greece or abroad. Moreover, SAWA oversees the implementation of the “Code of Practice” for all donkeys and mules engaged in the Bay of Fira and is constantly making efforts towards the mitigation of their health and working conditions.

If you are interested in supporting SAWA’s work and making life for our animal friends a bit easier you can make a donation at:

Alpha Bank Santorini
For: Santorini Animal Welfare Association IBAN: GR60 0140 6230 6230 0200 2012 044
BIC: CRBAGRAA

For more information about SAWA or about adopting a stray animal from Santorini you can visit our site www.sawasantorini.org or contact the veterinary clinic at 0030 22860 31482.

Thank you!

The purpose of SAWA and why it was formed

The reason we started SAWA in 1991: many visitors and residents found injured, poisoned, and abandoned animals on the streets and were bringing them to the veterinary clinic, leaving them to be helped...
With a group of friends, including Doris Karpetis from Switzerland who had the original idea, we started to raise money to cover the expenses for these animals. We put collection boxes in certain places and we kept records of everything we were doing. We still have all the files from those initial years.
We were informed that our work could be considered illegal if we were not registered as an official welfare association and at that moment we created our group, SAWA.
Finally, on 10/02/1992 SAWA had its first Articles of registration accepted.
Has anyone asked to read these Articles? To be able to follow our work you must know what exactly we are doing and the purposes for which this welfare group was created.

According to the SAWA Articles
Purpose of SAWA is to promote humane behavior towards all animals.
The main goal of SAWA is to help the street animals, to protect their health and aid in their recovery from disease.

Our secondary goal is to do what we can to protect all animals from abuse, torture, even for those animals who have owners.

We also intended SAWA to promote sterilization, in an effort to curb animal overpopulation on the island, and whenever possible to assist in finding good homes for unwanted animals.
We have been struggling to meet these goals with a handful of active volunteer members, all year round, ever since.

New ideas are always welcome, however, given the limited human resources our organization has, we are only able to accomplish as much as is humanly possible...

Barbara Zaehnler-Angelopoulos,
Majda Anderson,
Margarita Valvis-Roussou