In Tangier, at the end of the 1970s, Salima Kadaoui was still a child when she made a wish to improve the lot of stray animals. As an eight-year-old volunteer with an animal charity, she found that the lack of municipal vaccination and neutering programs made her job even more difficult. “I would come home crying, unable to accept the situation,” she recalls. I promised myself to transform mentalities in my country.”
In 2012, after raising her children in the UK, Salima returned to Morocco to care for an ailing relative. She took the opportunity to keep her childhood promise and found the Tangier Wildlife Sanctuary (SFT). It currently hosts more than 450 dogs, 100 cats, 48 donkeys, two wild boars, a monkey, two storks and a mule, among other animals. Funded by donations, the shelter employs 14 people, half of them former homeless people who now live on the site. They collect stray animals and have them sterilized and vaccinated before sending them to the sanctuary.
A good part of their time is devoted to dogs: there are three million of them roaming the towns and villages of Morocco. With her team, she treated, sterilized and vaccinated more than 3000 dogs.
During the pandemic, the SFT expanded its activities to distribute food to homeless people and stray dogs in Tangier. Salima Kadaoui is convinced that the sight of the trucks mobilized to help them helped bring them together. “They shared the same distress,” she said. Today, more people are sensitive to it.”
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