Petsession

Yaroslav Vedmid, Strategist, Postmen Ira Pavlova, Art Director, Postmen Mariia Pustovit, Project Manager, Postmen Anna Seniuk, Creative Director, Postmen Kateryna Riabchenko, Creative Copywriter, Postmen Olga Mykhalets, Creative Producer, Postmen Daria Kukisheva, Production Manager, Postmen Lola Mamadzhanova, Photographer Iryna Shovkun, Web project manager, Postmen Vyacheslav Doroshenko, UI/UX designer, Postmen Mariia Korotkevich, Creative Copywriter, Postmen

There are 250 homeless animal shelters with more than 100 000 homeless animals in Ukraine. People treat them as one gray mass - poor, sick, unwanted and problematic. Most people take in homeless dogs or cats just out of pity. Though the percentage of people who are ready to adopt homeless animals out of empathy is very slim.  People want to have pets, so they would become friends with them. But to become friends, pets must be treated like personalities. The idea was to discover and show something very personal in every homeless pet to show that each animal is cool and special. Therefore, when you choose an animal, you do not choose a temporary roommate who needs to be sheltered for a while. You choose a true family member and partner for many years to come. How do people usually express their personality? One of the methods is a photo session. Therefore, we decided to hold professional photo shoots for animals from shelters to reveal their unique personalities. We started with photo sessions for about 100 animals in one of the biggest shelters in Ukraine, Sirius, and named the project the Petsession. Also, we created a simple and easy to navigate website, where we uploaded all the portraits with animals stories and characteristics.   However, a week after the first photo shoot, a full-scale war started in Ukraine and the Sirius shelter, located in the Kyiv region where we were filming, came under occupation. It’s become impossible to proceed with next photo sessions. At the same time, people began to flee their homes in panic and leave their pets behind. The number of homeless animals has increased several times, and all of them need help.   Therefore, we have expanded the Petsession project into the Adopt Pets of Ukraine. We started collecting applications from zoo volunteers from all over Ukraine, and published them on social media. We have kept the main idea of ​​the project - to show animals as unique, cool individuals. Therefore, we started to design bright publications with fluffy dogs and cats, and publish their stories. Also, we interview all potential pet owners - we call them petparents. It is important for us that the pet finds a loving and reliable petparent, so we check potential families.   In addition, to show the problem of adoption from the fan side, we created a tiktok channel, where the main characters of the video are animals from shelters and those who have already found a family. In one month, we published stories and photos of 150 animals. We helped 40 animals to find new homes, 2 of them moved to Prague and Berlin. And this is only the beginning.