Working Animal Alliance (WAA)

The Working Animal Alliance (WAA) is a strategic coalition of stakeholders seeking to raise awareness of the contribution working animals make towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The WAA believes that the critical contribution working animals provide towards the life of people is largely overlooked, despite spanning several areas of activities, including economic development, fighting poverty, climate change mitigation and the dissemination of diseases. Worldwide, working animals are very frequently one of the most valuable assets that people own: they facilitate income generation, enable resource provision, allow access to education and further gender empowerment. The Alliance is an informal group of countries, intergovernmental bodies and relevant stakeholders who will focus on emphasizing the crucial contribution of the world’s 200 million working animals towards the livelihood of hundreds of communities. It will take coordinated activities aiming to strengthen synergies across sectors and to support the delivery of the SDGs. It intends to work with countries that have large working animal populations and that are planning to present their the Voluntary National Reviews, to help highlight working animals’ contribution to development reflected in their reports. Joining the initiative is free. More information regarding the Alliance can be found at the Alliance’s webpage: www.workinganimalalliance.org

Equid Power Network - A new website on equipment for working animals

FECTU - the European Draught Horse Federation has teamed up with The Donkey Sanctuary and World Horse Welfare, two international animal welfare charities, to launch a new website that aims to share the best practice for owners of working equids, highlighting the benefits they offer to communities across the world, while promoting their responsible use and care.

PROMMATA International (P.I.) is an association that is committed to promoting modern animal traction in developing countries in order to support ecological agriculture of small farmers still relying mainly on manual work. Cooperation with the partners of the association aims to provide equipment, to offer training and to relieve the physical strains of farming men and women in order to improve their agroecological practice and their income. P.I. has unique expertise regarding agricultural equipment for animal traction and has run projects in different countries of the Maghreb and the Sahel as well as in Madagascar and in Mexico. The association also has specific experience and practice regarding cooperation linked to the development of local expertise (construction workshops, training and using work animals, breeding and agricultural practices) The modern equipment for animal traction is manufactured on site in the workshops of the partners in the developing countries, relying on the transfer of know-how through international missions and training provided by the P.I. experts.