Shining World Compassion Award Recipient: Woodstock Farm Sanctuary

The sanctuary was founded seventeen years ago by Jenny Brown and Doug Abel. Its purpose is to rescue farm animal-people that are abused, neglected, and cruelly treated, and provide them with the care and comfort they need to live out their natural lives in peace. Woodstock Farm Sanctuary began on a much smaller property that was mostly unfenced at the time. The number of animal residents has steadily increased over the years, and after moving to its current location, its infrastructure has been improved, with large barns being built to provide indoor facilities to the animal residents. Cow-people sheds, chicken-people coops, an animal-people hospital/treatment room and a visitors’ center have also been added. The sanctuary is now home to almost four hundred rescued farm animal-people of various kinds.

“We provide them with daily medical care and anything that they need. We have an incredible caregiving staff here that tend to everything that you can think of that the animals might need, for the rest of their lives.”

Many different kinds of rescued animal-individuals now reside at the sanctuary. These include some more familiar ones such as chicken, pig, cow and goat-people, and also some that are seen less often, such as turkey and llama-people.

“We have our Facebook and Instagram accounts where we tell animal stories all the time. We always post about new rescues and the stories of animals that have been here for many years, special needs care. So there's a lot of videos on our social media platforms that reach hundreds of thousands of people that talk about our work.”

Upon hearing about the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, our Beloved Supreme Master Ching Hai “Gratefully present the Shining World Compassion Award to Woodstock Farm Sanctuary with a loving contribution of US$15,000. We salute the great compassionate deeds of the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary. May Heaven always bless you both and all involved, abundantly.”