OUR BEGINNINGS
It all began in 2014 with a backpacking trip to Sri Lanka, where Dr Janey Lowes fell in love with the country and its abundance of community dogs. But with the island being home to approximately 3 million street dogs, she was horrified to see how many of them lived without access to even the most basic veterinary care.
As a vet, and over 5,000 miles from home with no equipment or supplies, she was completely unable to help. She contacted local vets, but it was difficult to find someone with the facilities needed to treat the more severe cases. In her mid-twenties and only three years qualified, she was determined to make a change.
Back in the UK, Janey sought advice from her boss, Nick Myerscough, expecting her ideas to be laughed off as crazy. However, she was stunned when Westway Veterinary Group donated £10,000 to help her move to Sri Lanka and set up a charity. They shared her belief that vets have a responsibility to ensure that every animal, regardless of borders or geographical location, deserves access to high-standard veterinary care.
WECare Worldwide was born
Moving to Sri Lanka in October 2014, Janey had intended to take only a one-year sabbatical (!), aiming to neuter and vaccinate as many dogs as possible. She saw this as the only way to tackle the bigger picture of overpopulation and limited resources. However, she could never have predicted the sheer number and severity of illnesses and injuries she was about to witness within a canine population that had minimal access to veterinary care.
So, instead of simply carrying out CNVR (catch-neuter-vaccinate-release) programmes as originally planned, Janey decided she had to fulfill her duty of care as a vet and somehow find a way to treat the sick animals too.
This is when Janey met her lifelines – Malaka, Chaminda, and Dr Nuwan. Together, the team of four worked their socks off, not only treating animals in need but also spreading the word about WECare and making sure we were well received in the communities where they lived and worked.
(Btw, you can find out more about our education programmes here).
At first, the quartet treated dogs wherever they could, on the sides of the roads or in Janey’s house in Talalla (when it was absolutely necessary). But by January 2016, her home was overflowing, making Janey realise she needed a proper base. That’s how, by renting an old primary school in a nearby village with a secure garden for recovering dogs to play in, Janey had found her (very rustic) WECare hospital!
Janey also spent her time working alongside some great Sri Lankan vets to carry out multiple neutering and vaccination programmes in the community. In the first year, 735 dogs were neutered, 956 vaccinated, and 202 treated for other ailments.
With the help of a growing team of local and UK volunteers, and the support of many friends, family, and kind sponsors, WECare treated thousands of dogs in 2016. However, money was extremely tight, and financial worries were never far from Janey’s mind.
As feared, by January 2017, money had run out. Just as Janey was on the verge of giving up, WECare was featured in a BBC documentary – an absolute lifeline. Donations surged, allowing her to slowly build the clinic where she and her team of local and international staff work today. It’s now the best-equipped veterinary hospital on the island outside Colombo, though we’re always looking for ways to improve.
Our clinic is absolutely vital, as we are one of only two veterinary hospitals with inpatient facilities outside Colombo. We cannot thank our supporters enough for making this dream a reality! Yet, the ever-present challenge is keeping it all running. We’re still a tiny charity, and running costs are high – every penny can literally mean the difference between life and death.
2019 brought another big break when we were featured on Channel 5’s New Lives in the Wild with Ben Fogle. We can’t thank Ben, now our very own patron, enough for the vote of trust he showed us. The response was overwhelming: we gained thousands of new followers overnight. For years, we had been dreaming of an X-ray machine, and were stunned when someone donated one after the show. Janey doesn’t like to admit it, but she cried when it arrived. It was a truly special day.
All of this prompted Janey to document all the special (and not so special) days by penning her own book, detailing the whole adventure from start to… well… that point.
Because the story didn’t end there
Fast forward to 2020, and we were in the midst of a global pandemic, having lost half our team almost overnight when some of our international staff had to make the heart-breaking decision to fly home. We worked around the clock on skeleton staff, as the needs of the canine and feline street population could not be put on hold…
Donations understandably dwindled during the pandemic, and we reached a point where we weren’t sure how we’d continue. When we finally got the confidence to admit this, our supporters pulled through, and thank goodness they did, because the most magical things have happened since. In October 2023, after years of dreaming, our 40-foot, state-of-the-art CNVR lorry, Big Bertha, hit the road. This allowed us to extend our international standard of vet care to dogs in the field, thanks to Big Bertha’s oxygen generators, gas anaesthesia, monitoring equipment, IV fluid therapy, surgical lights, and air con.
Towards the end of 2024 we launched Sri Lanka’s first ever tuk tuk ambulance for street dogs, The Three Healer, lovingly nicknamed ‘Georgey’ after a much-missed WECare dog who was taken from us way too soon. The ambulance allows us to start giving critical care to patients as soon as we reach them, including pain relief, oxygen therapy, fluids, intubation — everything we need to increase the chances of a patient surviving.
Then, in early 2025, we welcomed our purpose-built dog catching vehicle, Bon Bon (named after one of our previous patients), which helped increase safety and efficiency when transporting dogs to and from CNVR sites. The best part? We have an additional one of each of these vehicles on the way!!
We’ve also now grown to a team of 65 (!), secured the land for a brand new hospital, rehabilitation area, and veterinary training centre, and opened a beachside street dog cafe where 100% of profits go back to WECare.
And if you think we’re stopping there? You must be mistaken — watch this space!
