Project summary

WellBeing International (WBI) seeks to increase awareness and understanding of the well-being of people, animals, and the environment and how they are interconnected. In pursuing this goal, WBI notes it is crucial to promote a global movement recognizing animal sentience - the capacity to experience negative and positive states. Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century Utilitarian philosopher, emphasized that the capacity to suffer is a crucial characteristic for beings of moral concern. Peter Singer, a modern Utilitarian, also identified animal sentience as the critical characteristic grounding the moral status of animals. WBI's project will specifically focus on the sentience of farmed and wild animals. The project includes public outreach to academics and ordinary citizens worldwide. The project aims to stimulate the development and implementation of international, national, and local policies that improve animal treatment and reduce animal suffering.

WBI will produce two webinars, two podcasts, two news story series (six articles), and two peer-reviewed target articles on the sentience of farmed and wild animals. The two target articles, plus additional expert commentaries on them, will be published in Animal Sentience. By inviting open-peer commentaries on the target articles, the Journal promotes the dialectic of science. It encourages in-depth discussions on the challenging topic of animal sentience – namely, what is sentience, how can we identify which animals are sentient, and what are the implications of demonstrating that a group of animals is sentient?

 Two curated and enriched exhibits will be created in the WBI Studies Repository, a digital library of open-access documents and reports. The two multi-media exhibits, incorporating webinar recordings and audio files, will identify and include essential farmed and wild animal sentience reports and highlight their key conclusions. The new exhibits will allow users of the WBISR to quickly find accessible materials on both topics that can be easily accessed worldwide.

WBI will track public engagement in multiple languages using website metrics and tools like Google Trends. It will also track the development of new initiatives and policies addressing animal sentience worldwide. Through data collection and analysis, WBI will develop a more detailed picture of growing interest in and awareness of animal sentience. In addition, the use of the two new exhibits will be tracked.

Developing widespread global awareness and understanding of animal sentience and the interdependences between people, animals, and the environment as an accepted paradigm is a long-term endeavor. Understanding the connections is the foundation of change, leading to enhanced global well-being.

 What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

Goal 1 – Increase Understanding of Animal Sentience – Farmed and Wild Animals

 The project will raise the level of engagement among academics and policy influencers on farmed and wild animal sentience. Academic experts will be identified and invited to produce peer-reviewed target articles on farmed and wild animal sentience for publication in Animal Sentience journal. Professor David MacDonald of Oxford University's WildCru has indicated an interest in writing a target article on wild animal sentience. Drs. Cynthia Schuck-Paim and Wladimir Alonso in Brazil (see their recent book) are possible candidates for the farmed animal sentience target article. Once the two target articles are posted, commentaries on each topic will be recruited from the Journal's pool of over 200 experts. The published commentaries are an essential part of the dialectic of science, leading to increased awareness and an enriched understanding of animal sentience. 

 Goal 2 – Expand Global Awareness & Movement Building for Farmed and Wild Animal Sentience

 The ultimate outcome is a raised awareness of farmed and wild animal sentience that supports humane policy initiatives and recruits global citizens to engage at all levels – community, state, national, and international – to shape positive action for wild and farmed animals. The project will track academic interest via standard scholarly metrics and the level of general public interest in the webinars, podcasts, target articles, and newsletter series via appropriate web search measures.

 The project will feature two podcasts, two webinars, and two newsletter series on Farmed and Wild animal sentience. The new multi-media special exhibits in the Repository will facilitate quick global access to relevant articles, webinars, and podcasts on each topic.

The project will also argue that improving the well-being of animals enhances the well-being of humans and the environment.

 Goal 3 – To Enrich Exhibits and Expand Impact Analysis

 Creating an appealing and user-friendly central repository for people to learn about animal sentience and access timely articles and publications is critical in raising global awareness. To enhance access and use, the WBISR will feature new exhibits focusing on farmed and wild animals that provide access to people worldwide seeking information on animal sentience.

Expansion of the collection, analysis, and impact data will help us gain insights into what outreach is most effective in raising global awareness about animal sentience and what does not work. The project will expand the analyses of academic publications and citations, target local and national animal sentience policy initiatives, and track general public interest in animal sentience on the internet across multiple languages.

How will this funding be used?

WBI will produce two webinars, two podcasts, two newsletter series (six articles), and two peer-reviewed target articles on the sentience of farmed and wild animals. The two target articles, plus additional expert commentaries on them, will be published in Animal Sentience. Two new special exhibits in the WBI Studies Repository (a digital library of open-access documents and reports) will consolidate materials for both topics and provide free and accessible global access.

 See Detailed Budget Below.

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

·        Team Members:

o   Dr. Andrew N. Rowan, WBI President, Chief Program Officer,

o   Dr. Stevan Harnad, Editor-in-Chief, Animal Sentience,

o   Laura Gosse, Director of Communications & Media,

o   Kathleen Rowan, WBI Chief Executive Officer,

o   Haytham Nakhleh, Director of Finance.

·       Track Record: In 2021, the Centre for Effective Altruism invited WBI to undertake a project on Invertebrate Sentience. The current proposal is modeled on that project's success (see description below).

 o   WBI held two successful webinars on invertebrate sentience on October 20 and October 27, 2021, attracting 3,030 registrants. The webinar recordings posted on YouTube have subsequently been viewed over 3,000 times.

 o   As part of the Animal Sentience project, two peer-reviewed, target articles on animal sentience were published in the Journal Animal Sentience, hosted by the WellBeing International Studies Repository (WBISR). These two articles generated 49 commentaries from cognitive science experts. As of August 15, 2024, at least 25,000 users had accessed the articles and the commentaries. The articles and commentaries are available via the WBISR and may be accessed worldwide at no charge.

 o   An annotated bibliography of core publications on invertebrate sentience was produced and is currently available for reference in the WBISR.

o   Two newsletter articles, Invertebrate Animal Sentience and Animal Sentience Moving Forward, were published to raise awareness of invertebrate sentience. These newsletters were sent to 3,840 individuals through MailChimp, generated 1,802 click-throughs to the website, and promoted widely on Facebook.

·       Leveraging existing programs and infrastructure: Wellbeing International's existing programs and infrastructure leverage the organization's project implementation and impact.

o   WBI maintains the WellBeing International Studies Repository (WBISR), a digital open-access library available to users worldwide without charge. The Repository records approximately 500,000 uses a year and has had a cumulative 3.3 million uses from every country and region globally since 2014. The WBISR is of particular value to users in Low and Middle-Income Countries who often cannot access documents behind publishing paywalls.

 o   WBI publishes Animal Sentience, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal indexed by Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals. Approximately 100,000 copies of articles in the Journal are downloaded every year.

o   WBI's website contains an extensive collection of articles, resource documents, presentations, access to webinars, WBI program updates, conference information, and a direct link to the WellBeing International Studies Repository.

 o   WBI publishes 22 newsletters annually, widely distributed and read on its website. In 2023, these newsletter articles were distributed through MailChimp, Facebook, and Google Ads, reaching over 3 million people.

 o   WBI has significantly improved its ability to disseminate information via social media platforms. In April 2024, Microsoft selected WBI for its non-profit Ad program. In May 2024, WBI's Microsoft Ads generated 32,318 clicks and received 4,703,352 impressions.

 o   WBI has been monitoring the global use of the term "well-being," including variations such as "wellbeing" and "well being." Google Trends shows a growing international interest in this topic, as seen in the chart below. While WBI certainly cannot take sole credit for this increased awareness, it does confirm the significance of the premise on which this organization was founded to enhance the well-being of people, animals, and the environment, recognizing their interconnectedness and mutual interdependence.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

The main reason this project may fail is a lack of funding. WBI has already demonstrated it can successfully implement this type of project. Furthermore, our experience with Google Ads and our recent selection by Microsoft to participate in their Ads program have led us to believe we can improve on the outcomes of the original prototype program and increase the project's impact on a larger scale.

We would also caution that gaining sufficient global awareness of the importance of animal sentience and the interconnections between the well-being of animals, people and the environment will take time. Without a basic understanding of animal sentience, its importance, and its impact on people, animals, and the environment, WBI is concerned that individuals worldwide may not participate sufficiently—at community, state, national, and international levels—to promote favorable humane policies and actions on behalf of farmed and wild animals. If the world continues to focus its efforts in a siloed manner, where the well-being of people, animals and the environment are viewed as separate issues, we will fail to make sufficient progress toward a sustainable world. Developing widespread global awareness and understanding of animal sentience and the interdependences between people, animals, and the environment as an accepted paradigm is a long-term endeavor. Understanding the connections is the foundation of change, leading to enhanced global well-being.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

WellBeing International has received funding supporting WBI's animal sentience initiative and the WellBeing International Studies Repository. We are engaging with potential donors to broaden our funding support for these projects. The Summerlee Foundation has significantly supported the WBI animal sentience projects and the Repository. While we do receive some income from individuals, the bulk of our funding has been provided by foundations and corporations.

WellBeing International is committing $52,000 of its resources to support this project in addition to the requested $75,000 funding support.