Titled ‘Water receded, dogs remained,’ the campaign features pictures of dogs painted onto fragments of walls salvaged from the shelters that were left ruined by the disaster.
One such mural has already appeared in Warsaw’s Browary Warszawskie development and depicts three real-life shelter residents sitting below a distinct line showing how high the waters reached.
Michał Sęk, CCO of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the firms involved in the campaign, said: “Shelter animals were defenseless in the face of the tragedy—while waiting for a permanent home, they even lost their temporary one.”
He added: “The infrastructure of the shelters was completely ruined, but instead of getting rid [of the walls] we turned them into a symbolic cry for help... The waterlines that remain visible on these walls illustrate the scale of the disaster and what the animals went through.”
The campaign aims to raise 1,300,000 złotys (€302,000), with the money going to rebuild three shelters in Kłodzko, Konradowa and Dzierżoniów in southwestern Poland.
Katarzyna Sowa from the Pod Psią Gwiazdą Foundation in Kłodzko said: “Our foundation was completely flooded and we were unable to save anything other than the animals. Most dogs were transported to other shelters that were not affected, but they cannot stay at these indefinitely.”
“The situation has been made even more difficult with the approach of winter—such conditions are dangerous for animals that do not have warm and loving homes, so every złoty raised as part of this campaign counts,” she added.
The murals include QR codes leading to a donation page and are set to be rolled out in two other, as yet unnamed, cities.
