Local work.
Global goals.
HeartDogs aligns with six UN Sustainable Development Goals - because the work sits at the intersection of poverty, health, gender, employment, inequality, and animal welfare.
HeartDogs maps to six SDGs directly and substantively.
Creating sustainable income where none existed before.
HeartDogs creates a skilled, paid role for women in rural villages who had no formal income before. Regular earnings, close to home - no commute, no migration, and no uprooting of family or community.
Supporting independence, health, and daily wellbeing.
Our assistance dogs support people with physical disabilities, autism, hearing impairment, and psychiatric conditions. Our therapy dogs bring comfort and connection to hospitals, care homes, and schools.
Empowerment for women who had never worked before.
Our foster-trainers are women who had never worked before joining the programme. HeartDogs gives them a skilled career, a regular income, and work their communities respect - in their own villages, on their own terms.
Building a new skilled employment sector in rural India.
Every dog in training creates work beyond the foster-trainer - logistics, coordination, and community support roles. HeartDogs builds dignified, skilled employment in rural Karnataka where formal work for women is rare.
Making assistance dogs accessible to people in need.
People with disabilities in India have historically had no access to trained assistance or therapy dogs - a gap that has gone largely unaddressed. HeartDogs is building India\'s first programme to change that, one placement at a time.
Rescue over breeding. Using what India already has.
Every HeartDogs dog is a rescued Indie - India's indigenous street dog, not a purpose-bred import from an expensive breeding programme. We give dogs that would otherwise have no future a second life and a purpose.
HeartDogs is a registered Section 8 non-profit based in Bengaluru. If you are a CSR team, foundation, or institutional funder looking to align your giving with the SDGs, we would like to have that conversation.