Ivan Ramos, known as Koyu, explains how Fundación Suara started as a record label and grew into a foundation rescuing street cats in Barcelona. The organization runs a physical space called Cat House and handles adoptions for the cats they save.
Hello and welcome to Animal Expert. Today we will introduce you to the work of the Suara foundation, led by its creator, Ivan Ramos, better known as Koyu.
Hello, how are you? I'm Ivan koio and we're at the Suwara Foundation. Chaos. It's one of the most beautiful projects, if not the most beautiful one we have in Suara. We started out as a record label, but it's grown bigger and bigger until we now have our own clothing store and a foundation that helps street cats. The foundation was founded in 2011 by my girlfriend and I. She's a feline veterinarian and it's just us. We started feeding the cats we had near our house and little by little it got a little bigger thanks to her, my girlfriend, who took the cats in and sterilized them. We started joking that we were a foundation because we were helping more and more cats. And one day we said, we have to make this official because we really do look like a foundation. So we created the foundation. And over the years, thanks also to the growth of the record label and my growth as an artist, as a record producer, we've had the opportunity to open our own space, right, a physical space. Because until then, people couldn't see the cats unless it was through social media. Now people can come and spend some time with our cats, both the cats that are here to help socialize, the other cats and the ones that are adoptable. Having a foundation is not cheap or easy. Well, it takes a lot of resources. And those resources come basically from my work as a jokey, from the record label's parties, from music sales on digital portals, as well as from sales in the store downstairs from Cathouse. We have our physical store where we sell eco friendly fashion with organic clothing, trying to be as local as possible to do as little damage to the environment as possible. And those resources that we get thanks to music and fashion, well, we. We put them at the service of our cats. Currently we have seven cats in the foundation, well, in Cat House, because the foundation is much bigger than Cat House, of which, well, three are not adoptable because they help the rest of the cats socialize much better. And then the process of going to a home, well, to a family, well, is much, much easier. We are in the center of Barcelona, in El Born. We are open Thursday afternoons, Fridays and Saturdays, both during the day, both in the morning and in the afternoon. We offer a beautiful space where you can spend some time with the cats, read and basically be comfortable with them for a while. If love arises, you can start the adoption process. It is very important to us that the cat you choose is the right one for you, your family, the space where you live, the. And the same goes for the cat. For me, they are the most important thing. For us, we try to ensure that they go to the best place with the best family possible.
