GARC’s September Featured Platform User: Bali Paws, Indonesia
The theme for World Rabies Day this September is Act Now: You, Me, Community. To show how a community can come together to work towards rabies elimination, this month’s featured GARC Data Platform user is Bali Paws in Indonesia. Bali Paws is an Indonesian volunteer-run animal welfare organization dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming stray and abandoned animals. They focus mainly on dogs and cats. The organization aims to provide
- urgent medical care to animals,
- vaccinations,
- sterilizations, and
- safe shelter for suffering animals.
Aside from rescue operations, Bali Paws also works to increase awareness around responsible pet ownership. They encourage their communities to support local sterilization and vaccination programs intended to control stray numbers and prevent the spread of diseases like rabies. Through compassion and active pursuit, Bali Paws is an essential contributor to animal welfare in the communities they serve.
Since February 2025, Bali Paws has used the GARC Data Platform to collect, visualize, and analyze rabies-related data in Indonesia. They have since:
- Recorded 6,668 animal vaccinations.
- Recorded 8,199 animal sterilizations.
- Educated 221 people.
We asked Chantal Morgenstern, co-founder of Bali Paws about how they use the GARC Data Platform and the benefits they have experienced since using it for their day-to-day operations.
Briefly explain what rabies-related work you do?
We go from village to village to neuter and vaccinate roaming dogs and dogs that have local owners, but who cannot afford to vaccinate and neuter their animals. We mostly go door-to-door. However, depending on the area we are also able to have big neuter and vaccination events where everyone can come with their dogs (and cats) to get this service for free.
How long have you used the GARC Data Platform?
We have been using GARC Data Platform for 8 months, since January 2025.
What benefits have the GARC Data Tools provided you?
GARC has provided us with easy and colorful visualization options that we can show to our sponsors. Indonesia is unfortunately a rabies red zone country. We hope with the help of GARC, we can prevent the spread of rabies. We also aim to get as many dogs neutered to prevent the endless loop of dumping unwanted puppies. The map helps us to see where we have vaccinated, neutered dogs and even hosted education events.
Which of the GARC Data Tools have been most beneficial to your work and why?
The Vaccination and Sterilization Tracker, and also the Education Initiative Tracker.
The most common solution so far from the government has been to eliminate dogs from entire streets. However, we believe only vaccinating and neutering will help to eliminate rabies. We have already prevented villages from culling dogs by giving them an alternative: When we show them our progress with the Vaccination and Sterilization Tracker, they can see that culling is not the only option.
At Bali Paws, we believe that kids are the hope for the future. With the Education Initiative Tracker, we can see exactly which schools we have already visited, how many kids (and adults) were educated, and how many booklets were handed out.
If you want to see more of our work, please feel free to visit their website at https://balipaws.com/. You can also follow their work on social media.
We look forward to our ongoing partnership with Bali Paws. We also want to thank them for their ongoing use of the GARC Data Platform.
Are you working towards rabies elimination? Do you want to benefit from improving your data collection process? Do you want to be able to visualize this data to engage with potential donors in a more meaningful way? Contact us to become part of our growing network of GARC Data Platform users – click here.
Alternatively, if you are already actively using our GARC Data Platform, send us an email to support@rabiesalliance.org and you could be our next featured user!