Donkey sanctuary programs operating in developing countries demonstrate effective community-based approaches to working animal welfare that improve lives at scale.
Donkey sanctuary community programs demonstrate that welfare improvement in low-resource settings requires a different approach than welfare improvement in wealthy countries. Individual rescue and sanctuary placement — the dominant model in wealthy countries — is not scalable to the hundreds of millions of working donkeys globally. Community-based programs that build local capacity, address economic barriers, and align welfare improvement with owner economic interests achieve scale that direct care cannot. The most effective programs combine: training that builds permanent local capacity; market interventions that make welfare-positive practices economically accessible; mobile veterinary services that provide intermittent expert support; and monitoring systems that track welfare outcomes over time to guide program improvement.