Today’s post is rather simple and will be somewhat short.
With the state of the global economy such as it is…with the glaring harshness of unemployment here in the United States. With all that is going on socially and our access to near-instant information…how has this year been to you thus far?
I really would like to know. Has it been good, bad or just so-so? Just take a moment and post a comment below. Would love to hear from you.
It must be quite the honor for Siberian Snow Babies’ Animals for Autism Program to have one of the Grant Administrators from Global Giving take time out of her schedule to fly all the way from Washington, DC to visit and “volunteer” at the new training “facility.”
I hope that everyone is willing to give a welcome hand to Ms. K.C. Ellis of Global Giving. KC facilitates successful grant administration for the Pepsi Refresh Project. She is bilingual in French and English, and uses her language skills to work with grantees throughout the United States and Canada. Before coming to GlobalGiving, KC worked as a concierge for an international travel group, coordinated programs and marketing at the James River Green Building Council, and waited tables at a Cuban restaurant in Richmond, Virginia. She attended college at l’Université Jean-Monnet de Saint-Etienne and earned her Bachelor of Arts in both International Studies with a Focus on the Arts and French Language from Virginia Commonwealth University. Please feel free to visit the rest of the Global Giving team and let them know what a fantastic job they are doing.
I am hopeful that she has managed to pick up a little more information on how a service dog training program (and especially one for autistic children) should be run, and administered. There has been a lot of concern raised by several of the families who were lucky enough to be chosen by Siberian Snow Babies to be part of their Pepsi Pups Animals for Autism program. Initially they were told that the issues would just need to be worked out between them and the program’s founder, Lea Kaydus. Later on, Global Giving offered to do a mediated phone call. I wonder whom in the Global Giving organization has had experience working with service animals. Then again, some of the concerns are really much more basic than that. After all, it is very easy to give families the wrong tax information. It is very easy to represent your organization as a non-profit yet give no real way for those who have donated to your “organization” and way to take this deduction. Ms. Kaydus claims on her Facebook page for Animals for Autism
“However, the IRS allows Form 1023 to remain unfiled as long as an organization has gross receipts in each taxable year of not more than $5,000. Since Animals for Autism’s receipts are far less than $5,000, the NFP can accept contributions without filing until the end of the grant period. It is allowable to file the form within 27 months after the end of the month in which you were legally formed.”
Now I must ask, how is this possible since I know that my family has paid you $2250 and I know that several other families have also paid money to you – and yes, those are not donations, they are in fact payments. A donation is not usually accompanied by a payment plan which is what I believe we were all placed on to make owning a service dog a closer reality. And Ms. Kaydus, that does state gross receipts and not net receipts. Oh, that’s right, you had everyone send the money to your husband through his (your) normal puppy selling account. Was that to keep your “organization’s” gross receipts down? I wonder who else has noticed by now?
Ms. Ellis, since Ms. Kaydus seems to have such difficulty keeping the families in her training program apprised of the current training status of their service animals I hope that you will be able to assist. She has not yet identified a reliable way of determining which dog belongs to which family, although we had thought that a colored collar with maybe a dog tag with a name on it might be a start and would easily allow for visual identification. Must be difficult if the trainers must constantly pull out the microchip scanner to ensure that the proper dog is receiving the proper training. Which also brings to mind…what are the animals being trained to do. Ms. Kaydus had mentioned constant communication between trainers and family to ensure that the proper tasks were being identified and yet I don’t believe the majority of the families have been contacted. It seems as if maybe Ms. Kaydus has taken on more than she can really handle. Who would really know besides possibly another dog trainer. It might be worth enlisting some help from the PepsiCo Puppy Partnership (P3). Their trainer(s) seem to have done some pretty awesome work just based off of their Facebook page. P3 is a partnership between PepsiCo and Guiding Eyes for the Blind in which we support employee volunteerism by training and developing service dogs inside the workplace. Wow, PepsiCo has a program to train and develop service dogs inside the workplace…what an amazing concept.
Click on the picture to go to the rest of the album
Sorry, I got lost on a tangent. Once again, please say hello to Ms. Ellis and the rest of the team at Global Giving. Let them know you appreciate all that they are doing to help Siberian Snow Babies and their Animals for Autism Program. Maybe after this visit is complete, and Ms. Ellis has finished her “volunteering” the families involved might be able to get a few answers.
The digital age has brought with it a whole new world that brings with it a host of advantages. I have enjoyed the ability to communicate almost instantaneously with various members of the family seemingly no matter where they might be. It is commonplace for people to be carrying a cell phone, and this also means they are usually carrying a highly portable video/still camera capable of pictures ranging from 2 – 10 MegaPixels many capable of HD video. This means that a moment can be shared as it happens with an almost limitless audience. From the simple communication device of old it has now grown into the modern smartphone. Excuse me just a moment, I need to answer a quick Tweet.
From the phone a picture can be quickly posted to a Facebook album, Tweeted out, or pushed to any number of photo sharing sites to be shared with the world. Many a phone has the ability to run Skype and provide real-time video chat. Videos may be captured and uploaded to YouTube and yet for months families have waited for Siberian Snow Babies’ Animals for Autism to post a single picture of the dogs in their Autism Service Dog Training Class to be graduating this Spring. You know, the dogs to be trained using the funds from the Pepsi Refresh Everything grant that was applied for and received by Lea Kaydus, the founder of the Animals for Autism program. The only pictures of the growing “Pepsi Pups” were actually rather sad. The picture below links to the photo album. There is speculation as to the actual breed of the dogs. White Shepherd has been suggested a few times.
Do these look like dogs you would feel comfortable assisting your disabled child.
It would not be fair if I didn’t once again state that Lea Kaydus applied for the grant as an individual not as her “organization” and she is required to remain and individual until the end of the grant period. It would have been nice to have her publicly state this instead of continuing to campaign using the name Animals for Autism. And then once the grant was announced, Animals for Autism released a press release announcing THEY had been funded. Not really all that transparent.
But back to the original thread of this post. Communication with Animals for Autism though any form of written medium became all but non-existent. Lea insisted that the only reliable form of communication would be through phone…her cell phone. Which again makes me wonder…why, with that wonder of modern technology in her possession the majority of the time she was unable to capture a video of any of the dogs in training, or heck, even a picture of a training session. That would have given the families an opportunity to see their pups and the trainers in action. As far as I know, none of the families involved has even spoken with their trainer(s). All communication has been with Lea Kaydus.
I see a lot of misdirection, smoke and mirrors and many parlor tricks.
Do you see what I see?
[Paws 4 Autism has setup a dedicated fund for the ten families directly affected by the Animals for Autism / Siberian Snow Babies / Pepsi Refresh Grant Scam. To donate to this fund please follow the Paws 4 Autism link here.]
[The domain AnimalsForAutism.com has been registered by a concerned family and will be used to point to verified Autism Service Dog sources. Any of their sites will have a labrador has its primary picture.]
From the official application guidelines for the Pepsi Refresh Project: The Pepsi Refresh Project is an online grant program which makes available millions of dollars to be granted to projects which are intended to improve communities through an online, democratic voting process (“Grant Program”).
This program has such amazing potential providing 60 grants totaling $1,125,000 per grant period to help individuals improve their communities. Its funded ideas have included the replacement of equipment for high school marching bands, building community playgrounds, the shipment of care packs to deployed soldiers, and the funding of animal shelters and rescues. So how does the magic begin?
A person, or organization (for-profit or non-profit) submits their idea via the online application. The idea is then put up to a public vote on the Grant Program website. The top ten ideas receiving votes then go up for final certification prior to funding. Sounds simple enough. There are stories that the competition for these grants, especially during the last stages of voting, can get quite cutthroat. Sadly, I think that sometimes it can bring out the worst in people while attempting to promote good.
The “founder” of Siberian Snow Babies’ Animals for Autism, Lea Kaydus, applied for a grant during the May voting period. She solicited support from everyone and anyone she thought might be able to help her gain the grant, including partnering with other organizations competing for grants. In her Animals for Autism Facebook page she sought support from her Facebook fans. Her press release dated May 1, 2011 titled Animals for Autism to Place 10 Autism Service Dogs Free of Charge? does very clearly identifies her organization as the grant requester. The posts on the Facebook page were the same. If you had asked the families participating in her service dog training program who would be the grant recipient I am fairly certain the response would have been Animals for Autism, and not Lea Kaydus. So in this way we all felt very misled. I suppose things like this happen and I should not be surprised. So I am going to just ignore this for now. I would like to focus on other things.
A few days ago I decided to pose a few questions to Lea Kaydus on her organization’s Facebook wall. Here is my post:
Why are you posting pictures on the Animals for Autism Facebook page of puppies that are clearly listed for sale on PuppyFind? I would think that it would be better to post pictures of service dog training, since that is what you do (after all, you don’t just breed puppies and sell them)
I would love to know the thinking behind it but am sure my post will go the way of many others like it on your wall, unanswered.
And the reply coupled with a picture of yet another group of puppies playing.
Some of the families have been told that the Pepsi Pups are currently in emergency shelters because you have not received the entire $50,000 grant from Pepsi. When you modified the funding agreement, and your detailed line item budget as required by Global Giving did you not also include a line item for food and medical supplies? The families were informed by both Dennis Dowd and Terri Maini of the Pepsi Refresh Project that their funds provided automatic feeding systems, crates, leashes, harnesses, collars (wonder why none of the dogs wear collars or name tags) as well as building upgrades. When you consider that you normally already have all of that lined up through donations prior to offering up the service animal and are only requiring the recipient to cover training costs at roughly $5/hour I would think that should have been a priority.I am not angry at Pepsi or Global Giving. I understand that as business entities neither of you have done anything illegal and that the administration of the grants disbursed by your Pepsi Refresh Everything Project has been done according to the predetermined plan. I am disappointed in both of you because I feel you allowed someone to manipulate your program to gain the materials and equipment to increase the number of puppies they sell online; all of this done in the name of helping autistic children. And when the concerns were brought to your attention they were ignored. It was as if your program were infallible. Does that really hold true to the Mission, Vision and Guiding Principles of your companies?
OK, so you apply for a grant from Pepsi as an individual (although I would venture to say that you had to do so because your “organization” is not legally a legitimate organization) Then on your Facebook page where you’ve asked the rest of the world to Vote for your idea at Pepsi Refresh – why do you make it sound like “Animals for Autism” has applied. You never once said “The founder of Animals for Autism, Lea Kaydus, has applied for a grant from the Pepsi…”
And then, why did you issue press releases as “Animals for Autism” stating that you had received your Pepsi grant and would be using the grant to place free autism service animals? Especially since you already knew that this had changed because Global Giving wanted something more tangible to be able to measure your progress toward goal completion. Why did you not once mention this to those supporting you.
Where did your entire support system go? You know, the volunteers and donors who supply you with vaccinations and microchipping, puppy foster parents, supplies like food, leashes, collars, harnesses and dens. That is how you claim to only need the training fees to be covered by the applicant families. And if you knew this was not the case this time, why did you not include pet food, those other essential supplies and registration with local authorities for the pups, maybe even collars with name tags on them to allow you to visually differentiate the pups? Instead you chose automatic feeding systems (10 of them) so that the pups could be automatically fed in their kennels. Which family needs a pup trained to get its food from an automatic feeding system? Why would it be needed initially if the pups are with the foster puppy raisers? Almost sounds like you were wanting to use this almost as an assembly line to get your pups out there in quantity. How did your budget of $25,000 disappear so fast.
Did you spend it all on the construction of the “new facility”? From the outside it appears to be an add-on to the larger steel barn. It almost looks like your standard RV garage. I’m almost positive as prior owners of your own trenching and excavating company, you probably still have some contacts in the field. Why would you say that you “purchased” your new property when you are merely relocating your facility to land owned by your husband’s family. Why do you respond to every new person who posts on your Facebook wall asking how to acquire a service animal with “Feel free to email *********.yahoo.com for application information.” but refuse to reply to the families currently in your program. Why do you insist on deleting legitimate questions posted on your wall?
Why would you not leave a forwarding address with the Post Office? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you have received requests for explanations from the Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, Navy Legal, and I am sure others at your current address. How are your clients supposed to be able to find/contact you? You tell everyone who asks for information on your Facebook page to email you and yet claim to not have internet access for extended periods of time at frequent intervals. How did your daughter update her Facebook profile so often while you did not have internet access? Who posted the ads on PuppyFind.com for the Siberian Puppies on your behalf? What about the eBay auction that seems to be continuously renewed?
Recently Animals for Autism founder, Lea Kaydus, was asked by a reporter from WICS – Springfield for information pertaining to the concerns with her program. [She declined an on-camera interview with the explanation that it was not allowed by Pepsi] She informed the reporter that all was well with the program and that the puppies would be delivered on time as promised. That is very contradictory to the information received by one of the families in the program. This family was told that the puppies were in emergency shelters since she did not have the money to feed them. She also told another person who had called inquiring about a service dog training program that her program was on hold due to lack of funds, the puppies were in emergency shelters and had not yet begun training and that it would be 18 months after she was able to get them back before they would be able to be delivered. So which is it? You claim on your Facebook page that all is well, why was there no mention of emergency shelters and lack of funds for food?
Lots of questions and very few good answers.
Originally posted on: Dogs with a Cause
I am going to pass this wonderful opportunity along to anyone who happens to stop by. While I was cruising around Facebook my wife sidetracked me, directing me to the Dog Gone It fan page. It would appear that they have a Christmas Collar GIVEAWAY, and although I would very much like to find out that I have won, I would be remiss if I did not pass this opportunity along to everyone else. Without further ado, may I introduce you to a few of the Dog Gone It collars.
Go ahead, visit the page and give them a “Like”. And with that done, stop by the Giveaway tab and enter to win. Then check out your other methods of entering and if you feel so inclined…you get the general idea. Anyone can enter! No purchase is necessary!!
Thank you for taking a moment of your day to read this. I will begin posting to this site more often. The service dog trainer reference database is a work in progress and will start locally and then grow outward. In the meantime, please share the site with friends, family and anyone else you think might be interested. Continue reading
I want you to take a look at: From the Deckplates – Active-Duty Benefits in Perspective | U.S. Naval Institute
It has been quite a while since anything was posted here at my domain. I think it is time to start to remedy this. This site will eventually contain posts about what is happening in my life. Not strictly limited to the things that make me smile, or keep me happy – as the title somewhat implies, I am not adverse to making waves. After all, I am a Sailor.
Before we get too far there are a couple of other places I hope you will visit (listed below)