Five Acres Animal Shelter is a no-kill shelter that has two locations in the St. Charles area. These shelters mostly house cats and dogs, but they take in a lot of different types of animals. 

“I like the fact that it is a no-kill shelter,” Lori Black a volunteer at Five Acres said.

The animals there are from other shelters or they can be just from on the street. Sometimes they are from families that can’t take care of them anymore. 

“A lot of them are strays,” Black said. “They got a lot of dogs from other shelters.”

They have a volunteer program where people can sign up and help out with the animals. Volunteering there consists of three jobs: laundry; where people clean up the animals towels, clean up; where one cleans up after the animals, and enrichment; where volunteers play with the animals.

“I enjoy it a lot,” sophomore Hannah Button said. “Time goes by so fast.”

They have an application online for people to sign up for volunteering. Applicants fill out the application and have to donate $15. After that, they send volunteers an email containing a zoom meeting link. This link is for the orientation meeting. During the meeting, they talk about what they do there and the jobs one can do.

After that, volunteers tell Five Acres what job they want to do and then get set up for shadow training where they watch an actual worker do the job to learn about it. Finally, after all that, volunteers are ready to actually do the job. 

In order for someone to adopt one of the animals they have there, they have to complete an application on the website. After that, Five Acres will schedule a meet and greet with the animal looking to be adopted. The animals can cost anywhere from $50 and up. The cost depends on multiple variables. The younger animals usually cost more than the adult ones.