'We stand up for animals who do not have a voice'

A volunteer-run charity that feeds and sterilises stray cats and dogs at home and overseas has been nominated for a BBC Make a Difference Award.

Food Fairies was started in Swindon in 2019 by Sammy Cullis and her husband, Dave, and was officially awarded charity status last year.

The charity works to feed and re-home stray animals in Wiltshire, but also sends thousands of kilos of food to shelters in Romania and sponsors neutering programmes.

"We don't do this because we want praise, we do this because we want to stand up for the cats and dogs that desperately need a voice," Cullis said.

Her family first adopted a stray dog in 2011, and she said they fell in love with them from then on, despite Cullis being allergic to many breeds.

Then, in 2019, she posted on Facebook asking if anyone would be willing to donate any pet food to feed homeless animals.

"A plethora of beautiful people came forward saying they'd like to be involved," she said.

The charity now has a "family" of volunteers who give up their time to collect, sort and package food donations, run the second-hand pet shop where people can buy donated items, and even act as foster carers for the dogs waiting to be rehomed.

"We couldn't run without a group of foster carers; it's very important to us to have people who are experienced and able to assess dogs, so they are vital," Cullis said.

"For them to see the dogs' progress is really quite life changing and very rewarding," she added.

"We've all become a really big family, really. I know it sounds corny, but it's true, we're all very close."

The charity also sends packages of donated food and supports sterilisation programmes in Romania, which has a large stray dog population.

"We send between 16,000 and 20,000kg of feed to Romania every year from donations that have been sorted, packed and weighed by our volunteers and sent over to the dogs and cats that live on the streets or call shelters their home," Cullis said.

She added there are plenty of cat homes and charities near them, so they tend to focus their domestic work mainly on dogs.

In the future she wants the charity to "focus more on the sterilisation of animals worldwide and to continue to take in medical supplies and food", she said, while also continuing to rescue and rehome a small number of dogs locally.

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