20 Year Success Story – Dr. Elaine Ong

Dr. Elaine Ong is the founder and CEO of Vets for Compassion, a long-standing partner in ACTAsia’s Vets for Change programme. She helped found ACTAsia’s unique Train the Trainer project in 2009, setting in motion a chain of knowledge and compassion that is still spreading today.

Dr. Elaine Ong was born in Malaysia and moved to Melbourne, Australia, as a teen, certain of two things: the medical field called to her, and she had always loved animals. Veterinary science was the place where those two certainties met.

“Working with animals, compassion for these sentient beings grows, because you have a relationship with them,” she says. “Not just pets at home, but clients’ pets, the animals we rescue. All animals have feelings. They suffer from pain, sickness, fear.” That conviction has shaped everything that followed.

Elaine’s career has been spent not just treating animals, but building the systems and people around her to do the same. She is the founder and pro bono CEO of Vets for Compassion (VFC), a volunteer organisation whose work spans wildlife rescue during fires and floods, emergency response teams, and international veterinary training. She has been recognised with the University of Melbourne’s Belle Reid Medal, awarded to the top 100 women veterinarians in the world, named Boroondara Citizen of the Year in 2021, and in 2023 received the Member of the Order of Australia from the Governor-General – acknowledgement of her significant service to veterinary medicine and to animal welfare and rescue.

Elaine and ACTAsia 

In 2009, Elaine founded the unique Train the Trainer programme with ACTAsia. The path to TTT began, perhaps unexpectedly, in Bali. For around fifteen years, Elaine and her team had been volunteering there: training local vets in anaesthesia, surgical skills, and humane handling as part of a stray dog programme. The experience crystallised the importance of education. “Volunteering to go overseas to neuter animals gives you a good feeling,” she says, “but the work stops when you go home. The important thing is teaching locals to do it themselves.”

It was in Bali that Pei Su, CEO of ACTAsia, approached her. ACTAsia had been working to improve animal welfare across China and needed a veterinary partner to train local vets. Elaine’s first answer was no. She was already stretched: running her Melbourne practice, managing the Bali programme, responding to bushfires and floods in Victoria. How could she take on more?

But something in the conversation held her. “I was drawn to Pei’s compassion and intelligence,” she recalls.

“I knew she had something that was sustainable in her plans. She was not just a fly-by volunteer. She was interested in longevity, in the wholeness of the project.”

Elaine said yes.

Elaine (third from left) in 2009. Pei is fifth from left.

In 2009, she flew to China with one vet and two nurses. The experience made clear that what she was doing needed a proper structure behind it. So, directly because of the China project, she founded Vets for Compassion as an incorporated charity.

Train the Trainer: The Ripple Effect 

The logic of TTT is simple: don’t just teach vets; teach vets to teach other vets. “TTT is about longevity and sustainability,” says Elaine. “We want it to spread not just among vets who are already interested in welfare, but among everyone who comes into contact with animals.”

The programme teaches the entire arc of humane animal care, from first contact to recovery – handling, anaesthesia, surgical technique, and crucially, pain relief. “Pain relief wasn’t taught to us forty years ago,” Elaine says, “but it is so important to safety, welfare, and recovery.”

Selected from a pool of up to two hundred delegates, participants are chosen for skill and values alike. “They must be committed to animal welfare, committed to teaching others, and willing to keep learning. Because knowledge never stops.” They work through hands-on workshops before moving to live procedures: first observing, then guided, then independent.

More than thirty trained veterinarians across eight provinces now teach independently, each extending the reach of the original programme. “The biggest achievement is the sustainability,” says Elaine. None of it would be possible without ACTAsia on the ground. “Pei and the ACTAsia team organise the translators, the venues, the vet associations. We cannot do it without them.” 

Difficulties Encountered 

There are too many animals still in need, too many laws that fail to protect them. In Australia, kangaroos displaced by development end up injured or euthanised without adequate legal protection. In China, the early days of TTT required something more fundamental than technique: persuading vets that animals feel pain at all. “It is key that everyone gets exposed to the fact that animals feel the same as we do.”

Elaine is unflinching about the broader picture. “Compassion should extend equally to all animals. Even in Australia, domestic pets have different protections to a chicken or a pig. They all have the same feelings.”
Funding is a constant pressure. Emotional weight, too. “Euthanising so many kangaroos, especially during fires… it is not easy for our volunteers.”

What keeps her going? “I started something. Better finish it.” That, and the simple, irreducible fact of the animal in front of her. “When you see an animal on the side of the road that is broken, you cannot not do something.
You know that at least you’ve attended to that one.” 

Hopes for the Future

As ACTAsia marks its twentieth anniversary, Elaine’s wishes for the organisation are the same ones she holds for her own work: longevity and sustainability. 

For the wider movement, she places her faith in education – especially for children – and in the slow, steady work of changing how people see animals at all.

“Most people are kind, but they have no idea how animals feel. If we don’t teach them, they aren’t going to know.”

She points to ACTAsia’s education programme with warmth. “I love what they do. It’s got to start with children.”

Her message to ACTAsia at twenty is brief and heartfelt: “Good on them for taking on China, because most people would say you can’t, it’s too big. But we’re starting somewhere. And we’re chipping away.”

The Train the Trainer project is made possible by the generosity of ACTAsia’s supporters. 
Get involved and consider donating today. 

Donate now