Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw

10/29/2025

URGENT NEED!

Our SAFPAW Lunch Meal Delivery day is this coming Saturday. November 1st. And regardless of how long this administration refuses to fund our SNAP program we will be putting our feet on the ground to deliver meals for as many Saturdays as we have funding for.

We need you to keep this program on the road. We need donations for our Delivery Program of both lunch meals and food boxes.

This coming Saturday we need 200 sandwiches to go into our Lunch Meal. Could you, your company or church or organization make at least 25? We just need you to make the sandwiches, SAFPAW provides everything else that goes into the meal.

We want to provide a meal for at least 200 folks this coming Saturday. With you on our team we can do just that.

200 sandwiches. Can you make this happen? Email or text us on our resource line.

safpawnashville@gmail.com
615-474-8390

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw

Lori Eslick, SAFPAW Lunch Meals Coordinator

10/28/2025

SAFPAW has been pleading for this for so many years!

10/27/2025

We recently put out a plea for cat carriers that we need for both our Spay/Neuter and our Wellness Transports. And I want to thank and acknowledge both Jessica McNatt and Mike Minster for sending us new carriers! They have already been put to use on our last S/N Transport!

Thank you, Jessica and Mike. You are so very appreciated!

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawnashville@gmail.com

10/26/2025

The loss of our food stamp program, SNAP, seems like a reality we are beginning to accept. And it will be devastating. And while we do not have a voice at this time during this administration, we do have within us the power to do something.

SAFPAW began doing something about hunger when we all realized the devastation that COVID held in store back in March of 2020. The history of hunger is one where those who are already struggling struggle more while those in power do not care. So we have to care with a fierceness.

We are planning food drives and will be meeting this week to bring those plans forward. And we will need everyone to join in. We cannot always stop political battles but we can help our neighbors when those battles threaten their ability to feed their families or themselves.

We can increase our efforts to deliver lunch meals and food boxes so that we do all we can to make sure our neighbors are able to have the food they need.

We just need you. Join us, please. And please ask us all the ways you can get involved.

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawnashville@gmail.com
Lori Eslick, Meals Team Coordinator
safpawmeals@gmail.com

SAFPAW Resource number, please text.
615-474-8390

10/16/2025

Meet the newest volunteers and SAFPAW family members! Belle and Mike are amazing. They love our sanctuary cats and our cats adore them. And Mike has been busy helping us paint inside and outside and just making our sanctuary look so much better!

Mike made us this wonderful artwork that we will be hanging on our porch.

People like Belle and Mike are rare. They come into your life and you just want to always keep them close. Please welcome them and say hello if you stop by and they are sitting on the porch or spending time with our cats!

And if you have “odd jobs” around your house or office please let me know and I will put you in touch with Mike. He is amazing!

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawnashville@gmail.com

10/16/2025

We are in need of new or excellent condition cat carriers!

Both for cat owners we are working with and for our Spay/Neuter Transport.

Please, NO “soft” carriers as we cannot use those.

We will pick up within a 48 hour turnaround. Please know this is a critical need!

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawnashville@gmail.com
Resource line (please text) 615-474-8390

10/15/2025

This past Saturdays Meal Delivery Day brought a new partner to our table! Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee donated 200 sandwich trays! I picked them up on Friday and let me tell you, we are going to need a bigger service refrigerator at our sanctuary!

This partnership was made possible by Renee Pratt and Metropolitan Social Services.

Delivering lunch meals every other Saturday is no small undertaking but it is one that SAFPAW loves so much. To pull up to an alley and see people smile when you get out of the van turns everything around.

With partnerships and your donations we hope to get back to delivering our Lunch Meals every Saturday. I’m counting on that to keep us on the road feeding people and sharing hugs.

Laurie Green
Lori Eslick, Meals Coordinator
safpawmeals@gmail.com
615-474-8390 (resource text line)

10/13/2025

10/11/2025

"You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works."

~ Pope Francis

Friday was an impossibly busy but incredibly blessed day. We had 200 sandwich tray meals donated and that truly gave a boost to our Meals Program. There was actually too many to fit into our Meals Program refrigerator at our sanctuary so I delivered over a hundred late afternoon on Friday. The first tiny efficiency apartment I parked our van in front of was a wonderful Latino family that we all love. Hard working and dear people. The mother reminded me that if we could help with diapers (absolutely!) she needed that. Our conversation was made possible by her 7 year old daughter, who translated.

At one point I asked a question and this beautiful child told me “I don’t understand that good enough to tell Mom”. I hugged and said sweet girl that is okay, I got this.

Delivering these meals, these simple and wonderful meals, they changed my whole day. I was stressed. Administrative work was in my rearview mirror but Lord I am so behind there. But to see people so thankful to receive such a simple meal just pierced my heart.

People are hurting. Rents are impossibly high, food costs are ridiculous and minimum wage should be declared a crime against humanity. Our Meals Program steps in to address the hunger. We deliver, we don’t add to the burden of poverty by expecting anyone to come to us. In addition we bring pet food and more. Such as diapers and moves from a slumlord apartment to a senior high rise. And we bring confirmation that the people we serve matter. To see someone smile when we pull up matters as much as the food we bring.

When I left I’m not going to lie, I cried. To see such need not even 10 miles from our full refrigerator is something I will never accept. Our Meals Program is growing from need and because it is a program that serves, not just food but recognition that the person in front of us matters so much.

Our Meals Program lead, Lori Eslick keeps us on track. Our queen in charge of assembling the meals, Bettina Bowers makes sure every lunch meal has what it should hold. And we have a team of volunteers who assemble and deliver and without them we could not serve.

We need you though. To donate and to participate. To feed and to serve.

Contact Lori at the email address below. Text our resource line. If you would like to donate let me know and I will send you our QR codes. Just know you are needed.

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawmeals@gmail.com
615-474-8390

10/09/2025

Please allow me to be out loud happy about one of our sanctuary cats! Sugar was recently adopted by my friends Amelia and Melissa and did she ever win the forever home lottery! Love doesn’t get better than this.

I am also going to put information on how you can make the new album that Amelia White has in production happen! She is such an amazing artist, her soul and her music runs so deep.

And meet Sugar! She has not only 2 loving moms but a kitty brother who is learning that having a sister can be really cool.

Amelia painted our beautiful wall mural at our sanctuary so she is special to us. And knowing that one of our sanctuary graduates has forever places to snuggle just makes us happy.

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw

10/03/2025

These pictures were taken about 10 years ago as I was taking supplies to one of my favorite camps. We have fewer and fewer safe camps, and those we serve are not better for our criminalization of encampments. I was able to get most of the people at this camp housed after several years, so please know I’ll never glamorize being unhoused.

But life at this camp was pretty safe and dare I say…happy. They had peace. Their dogs were cared for. Camps are as different as neighborhoods. You can’t judge them, your judgement will never be fair. And to be honest I’ve seen folks forced to leave their camp only to end up in the house of a greedy slumlord that pales in comparison to their former home, their encampment.

I’ll stress this, no one should be unhoused. But the fact remains that we don’t have enough subsidized housing and what we have comes with so many obstacles. Before we condemn encampments we might have taken that into consideration. I just wish we would protect those who find a tent somewhere hidden in the woods as an alternative to having no anchor. And until we can assist them in finding housing that we would work to make their camp safe. And warm in the winter. Protection, not disruption. Dignity, not criminalization.

I have been blessed to have walked the path from homelessness to housed with so many. And I am always struck by their tenacity. By their determination to begin again. I am humbled by what I’ve witnessed. I just pray that the tide will turn back to compassion where we protect encampments and work with the residents instead of a ticking clock that is in a hurry to kick them out.

Protection, not disruption.

Laurie Green
Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare - Safpaw
safpawnashville@gmail.com