Introduction

The CyberFair project helped us use what we learned in class in real life. We practiced English by writing interview questions, summaries, and website content. Our research and interviews improved our skills in finding information, organizing ideas, and explaining them clearly. Using computers, documents, and website tools helped us build technology and digital skills. The project also connected to social studies and ethics lessons by teaching us responsibility, teamwork, and caring about community issues. We learned how to communicate respectfully with adults and professionals during interviews, and we improved our problem-solving skills when arranging visits and organizing materials. Making the website and posters boosted our creativity and design abilities. Sharing our findings with classmates and the community helped us practice public speaking. In conclusion, this project showed us how classroom learning can be applied to help others and make a real difference.

Our project is about stray animals and the issues they face in our community. Every day and night, countless strays suffer from unstable food sources, lack of medical care, and an unsafe living environment. We wanted to learn not just their living conditions, but also the challenges they’re going through, including the reasons behind them, and how people can help improve their lives. To learn more, we went from shelter to shelter to gather more and more information, talking to staff, listening to their experiences, observing the animals, and learning about the different challenges each place or shelter faces, such as lack of resources, insufficient funds, shortage of volunteers, or overcrowding. The more visits we made, the clearer we understood what’s truly needed and how the community can help improve their condition. During our visits, we realized how emotional and heartbreaking it can be to see those strays crowded in cages, starving, hurting, and waiting for someone to give them a home. We all saw the look in their eyes, filled with sadness, loneliness, and quiet fear. We couldn’t help but feel empathy for them; the more we saw, the more helpless we felt. But as we looked around the shelter, we also notice the look in the staff members’ and the volunteers’ eyes. There was determination, gentle hope and warm love in them. They were just like heroes; they were the reason the strays could trust humans again, the reason they could finally understand what the word “home” means —–the word that used to seem so far and untouchable for them. That was when we all agreed that we wanted to be among the people who help. Through research, interviews and real-life observation, we hope to spread awareness about the strays. This is why we created and displayed our poster in the school hallway: to inform and remind others that while we are here living our comfortable lives, there are still stray animals outside in the world struggling to survive; some may be freezing, starving, injured or even mistreated. Our goal is to encourage more people to care for them, support them, and protect them, creating a community where strays are treated with compassion, respect, and are showered with kindness. In the end, we want our project to inspire action, because even small changes can make a huge difference in the life of strays.

Reflection of Our Team

This is my first year in this club, I was unfamiliar with everything, including how to plan the entire schedule, how to start this project, and how to set up the website. During the process, I explored a new area that I had never thought about, but I enjoyed it a lot. I would ask the teacher or a friend when I had a problem with the project, or when I had no idea what was going on, they were my partner who I trust in. When I first used the website, I felt very troubled, I blamed every thing. Later, I slowly adapted my tools; it became smoother, and I could focus on the project more attentively. This is such a great topic that is very easy to research, I learned a lot of information about stray dogs, and realized we need to show more compassion to them. I hope those shelters can improve, and that the dogs can find better places to live. I also hope more people can understand the situation of shelters through this CyberFair Project, so that more people will put effort into this cause and help the dogs live a more comfortable life.

Participating in the Cyberfair project “The Voice of Strays” opened my eyes to the lives of stray dogs. I previously didn’t know of their day-to-day struggles, I only knew they were there and existed.

I learned the staff’s and volunteers’ daily struggles when I visited a shelter to take an interview. I learned that sheltering stray dogs requires a lot of time, resources and patience. I witnessed two different types of stray dogs. There were dogs that were shy, and dogs that were friendly, and also the dogs that barked at everyone. These differences can have a lot to do with their past experiences.

There is a big impact on the lives of animals from the human behavior of pet abandonment. I want people to listen to the “voices of strays” and help them. People need to create a soft shelter for strays and help the homeless animals.

This semester, our group embarked on a challenging journey fueled by our curiosity about stray dogs. In the beginning, we felt incredibly nervous when making phone calls to interviewees, and we struggled to coordinate everyone’s busy schedules for the visits. However, after interviewing the shelter teachers, we not only gained a deeper understanding of stray animals but also sharpened our communication skills through the process of transcribing audio and writing reflections in both Chinese and English.
Although translating the website into English and navigating the complex web-building process led to several setbacks, we persevered by seeking our teacher’s guidance and encouraging one another. We also created posters to raise awareness among our peers about the welfare of stray dogs. Though this process was demanding, we have not only deepened our knowledge of this issue but also learned how to face and overcome challenges together as a team

I really like dogs, so that’s why I chose this topic and joined this team. I want to ask questions about things I don’t understand yet, so I can learn more about them and hopefully help these dogs too. When we were contacting the company to confirm the interview name list and discussed possible times, but nothing is finalized yet. I was worried that they might not agree to it, especially since it’s my first time doing something like this. As I got more experience, I became more confident in interviewing people and organizing things for this website . Now, I actually enjoy working on Cyberfair and feel proud of what I’m doing. This is not just a project, it helps to empower the voices of silent and allows more people to learn about stray dogs and the issues they face. Stray dogs in shelters used to be killed if they were not adopted within twelve days. After hearing about this and the emotional impact it had on Jian Zhi Cheng with these animals, I realized how serious the issue is. This became my motivation to learn more and help raise awareness about stray dogs.

When I started this project, I thought shelters only had “wild” stray dogs. I was surprised to learn that many dogs there were actually pets once. They were left there for many different reasons. It made me sad to realize that these dogs didn’t do anything wrong; they just lost their homes. My project shows that whether a dog is from the street or was once a pet, they all deserve to be loved again. I also searched at different shelters like Banqiao, Neihu, and Wugu. I found a big difference! The Banqiao and Neihu shelters are in the city with parks and easy transport, so people go there often to see the dogs. But the Wugu shelter is hidden in the mountains. Because it’s hard to find, the dogs there stay much longer. This taught me that being “seen” is the first step to being adopted. The most important thing I learned is that a “bad dog” usually just needs a “good owner.” Many people think shelter dogs have bad behavior, but that’s not true. If the owner has a good attitude and a kind heart, any dog can become a great friend. Thank you!

Even so, sometimes we still need to be careful when children are playing with stray dogs, it may cause big problems. You may get rabies if you have been bite by a dog that has rabies too. Rabies comes from the dog’s spit, bite or scratch wounds during fun. If a stray dog bites you, wash the wounds or bite with soup water for 15 minutes first, then go to the doctor right away and get the vaccine. After you finish those steps, rest and keep calm and observe for your body reaction like fever, headache, or weird feeling at the spot that has been bite, if there is any excerption, go to the hospitle, let the docter to make a decision with you.

A few ways to recognize the dogs that have rabies is to see if they often drool or afraid of the water. Their personality will change, from tameness to anxiety, have aggressiveness, biting things randomly, barking neurotically, photophobia, walking unstably etc. Late stage, they will plunge into paralysis and jerk because their cranial nerves have been hurt. At last, their breathe will stop leads to death in a coma.