SPCA outreach programme ensures animals from disadvantaged communities are sterilised
MARLBORO – Nafisa Desbois used money gifted from her birthday to start the outreach programme.
Volunteers at the Sandton SPCA work tirelessly to help care for many stray and abandoned animals and raise funds to provide them with the best possible care.
This is the third instalment in a series of articles about the volunteers at the Sandton SPCA. The second article featured was Cat ladies full of love, Week ending 26 April.
Each of the volunteers dedicates their time to help ensure that the animals at the SPCA are well cared for and happy. One volunteer, Nafisa Desbois, began an outreach programme to ensure the sterilisation of animals from nearby disadvantaged communities.
In 2017, Desbois celebrated her 50th birthday by using the money she had been gifted to sterilise animals. To date, the outreach programme has helped sterilise about 250 dogs and cats from the nearby Alexandra community.
“It really is a fantastic thing, we’ll hand out pamphlets to say we will be there on a certain day and we go there and fetch the animals, at no charge to them, and we have them sterilised, and if there are puppies we have them vaccinated,” said Desbois.
She added that the animals were kept over at the SPCA for two nights and they were then transported back to their owners. “We also sponsor them with blankets and dog food just to help them.”
Desbois added that through the programme they were preventing more animals from ending up at the SPCA. Funding, however, was a struggle for the programme as the majority of the donations made to the SPCA was needed for more essential services such as medical care.
Much of Desbois’s fundraising comes from her friends and family, however, she added that their help could only go so far when there were so many animals that required sterilisations. Sterilisation for a dog costs R450 while it costs R350 for a cat.
Desbois said many people did not have that money to sterilise their animals and she hoped that the programme would assist those people by funding the sterilisations and thereby prevent more litters that could not be cared for.
Details: Sandton SPCA 011 444 7730.
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https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/223989/cat-volunteers-at-sandton-spca-share-their-love/
