‘The man on the moon a project to raise funds for stray animals

A marvelous novel which takes us beyond the earth named as “ The Man On The Moon” has been written by authors from 20 Rotaract clubs from all over Sri Lanka. This novel will take you to an unimaginable tour around the galaxy, written under the Sci-Fi fiction genre. The event was held on 29th May, 2023 at University of Kelaniya premises.  
The major aim of selling this book is to take care of stray animals. Providing a shelter for a stray dog is a way more common task in this era, but beyond that they have decided to provide vaccines for these stray animals, specially the parvo vaccine.  

Rotaractor Thedini Herath who took the lead for this novel shared her views with our Daily Mirror team. “What inspired me was when we were younger we would scribble stories on papers, . I became part of the team editorial last year and then from our avenue there were no projects, so I wanted to do something like this and we gave chapters to each club.”  

Further she added that, “When I was a kid I wanted to build a big house for stray dogs. I wanted to give proper vaccines, food and love for them. We are going to treat any animal and parvo vaccine is a very expensive vaccine, so with the funds we are getting we are going to invest on this vaccine.”  
In addition to that the Daily Mirror team spoke to veterinarian Dr. L.B. Kithsiri regarding the stray dog population in Sri Lanka. “From a statistical point of view there are nearly 3 million dogs in the country and of that 30% are stray dogs.”
It is highly doubtful whether the government has an open heart towards these stray animals in Sri Lanka and whether people are really concerned about these stray animals as a part of their community?   

Extending her support, the President of the Animal’s Welfare and Protection Association Iromi Salgado also added her opinion about stray dogs. 

“Actually I feel that sterilization of the female dog and neutering the male dog is the only answer to the growing population of community dogs. I also think we need more awareness programmes. Successive governments have not been able to conduct proper sterilization campaigns. Every government will say there is no money or something like that and even at present it is only the rabies immunization that is being given.”  
Stray animals in Sri Lanka are facing so many problems. They are being ignored a lot.   

“Most people are unkind and do not show compassion towards them, especially because they are dumped by people. They cannot talk. When you simply dump an animal, that animal becomes a community animal, unless you sterilize it.” added Salgado.