Citizen of the Week

Published 10:40 pm Friday, July 8, 2016

Chelsi Rodriguez-Butcher has taken her volunteering to the next level.

Rodriguez-Butcher recently took on the role of volunteer coordinator for ADREAM (Animal Disaster Relief, Emergency Assistance and More). She has volunteered with the group for two years.

Danielle Keith, founder and president of ADREAM, said, “It’s going to be a big help to our organization, especially with right now their being two of us who run the organization … around our full-time paying jobs.”

ADREAM is a “a nonprofit, animal welfare group dedicated to disaster response and relief for domesticated animals,” Keith said. “One of the ways we achieve disaster response is large scale disasters that everybody knows about, but we also wanted be able to help the smaller stuff that people don’t necessarily think of as disasters in the traditional sense, but to a family it would be a huge disaster if someone loses their job or becomes stricken with an illness … where the income structure of the family is severely depleted, we come in and run a pet food pantry where they can come in and get a monthly pet food allotment like a regular food bank.”

Rene Keith, event coordinator for ADREAM, said Rodriguez-Butcher’s volunteering exemplifies a high level of dedication to the organization.

“She works and has a child, but she will work around that as much as she can and help any way that she can. We need more like her,” Rene Keith said. “When this all first started, Chelsi lived here in Dalton, but since then she has moved to the Calhoun area. Despite moving that much further away she still comes up and helps. So that tells you about her commitment. She just does everything she can to help.”

Rodriguez-Butcher has helped in a variety of ways — fundraisers, distribution of the pet food to clients, creating signs for advertisement — but taking on the new role will be “immensely helpful,” Rene Keith said.

“Right now it’s mostly been Danielle and me, whatever is going on we wear all the hats trying to set up meetings with possible donors, or for locations to do things, vendors, getting food ready to go out, taking applications from clients, answering the phones,” said Rene Keith. “So for us to have somebody who can actually help us take volunteer applications … and actually coordinate going through them contacting them, it can help us solidify trying to figure out what they want to help with, how they can help and how we can help them.”

Each year the organization is invited to Tractor Supply’s annual PAW (Pet Appreciation Week).

“There are four and they all go on at the same time,” said Rene Keith. “It is impossible for us to attend all of them right now.”

But with Rodriguez-Butcher’s help, Rene Keith says they will soon be able to.

“If we have someone that was concentrating on that area, we could develop more, and we would be able to secure a more solid and widespread volunteer base,” Rene Keith said.

ADREAM will be at the Tractor Supply on Cleveland Highway today from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Everyone is invited to bring their dogs to be washed and enjoy a cookout. All proceeds go to fund the organization’s food pantry. You can follow ADREAM on Facebook.

For helping ADREAM keep pets with their families and expand its volunteer base, The Daily Citizen names Chelsi Rodriguez-Butcher Citizen of the Week.