JUN-AUG 1999

Envisioned to be the first real animal shelter in this country, The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) Animal Rehabilitation Center or PARC, is PAWS' most ambitious project to date. It will serve as a center for charitable veterinary services, catering to the pets of the low-income sectors, designed to provide temporary shelter to the countless number of (stray, abandoned and abused) animals.

At the back of the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, on the highest portion of a hilly 5,000 - sq.m. lot, owned by the country's largest electric company MERALCO, PARC will soon be built. Because of his unflattering love for animals, Larry Litchfield, an American architect, will do the architectural design. A founding partner of the New York City-based 'Shifter Burdick Litchfield Magnuson' architectural firm, Litchfield worked with a Filipino architect, Renato Osmeña Martinez, for eight years in the aforementioned firm. His experience and involvement with the New Rochelle Animal Shelter in N.Y. is an added bonus to PAWS. With regard to the helpless situation of the animals here in the Philippines, Litchfield can only say, "it breaks my heart to see a kitten on the street." It is this sentiment that PAWS and countless Filipinos share with Litchfield. With the full realization of PARC, this will surely help the animals' plight.