Humans of RESQ-Jyoti Swami

The RESQ team is made up of humans who have dedicated their lives to working for animals, people and places that are home to them. On International Women’s Day, we are thrilled to kick-off #HumansOfRESQ by sharing with you all the story of an incredible woman who works with us!

Jyoti Swami, grew up in Sangli and always felt passionate about wanting to work with animals. Since childhood, much against the wishes of her mom, she would rescue injured and distressed animals from the roadsides and nurse them back to health in her home balcony, purely using her instincts and a little help from friends. After completing her education, she worked as an accountant for a year until her calling to work with animals took over and brought her to RESQ. She started off by documenting and reporting animal cruelty cases for the District SPCA and now works closely with animals along with handling the incredibly busy RESQ Helpline during the day.

Her most favourite part of working at RESQ is raising orphaned animals. Right from checking on them multiple times a day, to personally feeding them to even monitoring their stool schedules and quality, for her it is as precious as raising one of her own. Her most memorable experience at RESQ so far has been raising and releasing a peafowl that required intensive care and rehabilitation.

A lesser known fact about Jyoti is that she was an athlete - practiced Rope and Mallakhamb until junior college and now being a Yoga enthusiast keeps her fit!

The statement she lives by is, “Humans have the ability to do so much more than just feel strong emotions - not just feel, we must act on actively reducing the suffering around us.”

When asked what animal would she have loved to be born as, she chirpily says, "a Bat".