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When the ASTRO Foundation, an Oakdale, Calif. animal shelter, first opened its doors, it was faced with the need for many volunteers. Board members decided to try something unusual: enlist a volunteer force primarily made up of local teenagers. It turns out, their idea has paid off more than they could have imagined.

When executive director Jaydeen Vicente saw how crowded her city’s animal shelter was, she and several other passionate animal lovers came together to form the ASTRO (Animal Shelter To Riverbank & Oakdale) Foundation, with the ultimate goal of becoming a no-kill shelter.

“The city shelter is over 40 years old and way too small to serve the population that it currently does, so we saw a lot of healthy, adoptable animals being euthanized, often due to lack of space,” Vicente said.

After doing a fundraising feasibility study, Vicente and the other ASTRO Foundation board members found that they would need far more community support and a much larger volunteer base in order to fund and maintain a no-kill shelter.

“In the process of thinking about where we might find a volunteer base, we thought, why not high school students, and even some middle school students?” Vicente said. “They love animals, they need community service credit for their college applications; it’s kind of a win-win for everybody all around.”

The ASTRO Foundation began recruiting teens for fundraising and volunteer events. After meeting Vicente, then-high school senior Stephanie Kupper decided to start a club at her school, encouraging other students to work at weekly adoption events hosted by the ASTRO Foundation. During its weekly meetings, the club, which has more than 30 members, soon developed their own fundraising projects.

“We made t-shirts and we had boxes that would go around local businesses, so we raised money so we could reach our long-term and short-term goals,” Kupper said.

With the help of the high school students, the ASTRO Foundation has already accomplished this year’s goal of purchasing a mobile adoption unit.

“They have endless energy and they have great ideas,” Vicente said of the teens. “They think outside of the box; they think of things that we as adults don’t always think of. They’re very astute with social media. There’s a lot of benefits to tapping into that volunteer base.”

For Kupper, who plans to study veterinary medicine in college, the ASTRO Foundation has been an ideal way to put her love of animals into action. “It’s rescuing, but it’s also rescuing with an extra perk; you’re basically giving them not just a second chance, but the chance that’s saving their life.”