Half-year update: SPCA highlights

There’s no doubt that 2022 has been a busy year so far. We reached the significant milestone of our 150^th anniversary of operation in New Zealand - we’re proud to have been advancing animal welfare and preventing cruelty since 1872. We’ve continued to provide care for thousands of animals every month, and adopted out over 10,000 animals into their loving forever homes so far this year.

As always, desexing has been a main priority. More than 9,000 animals have been desexed this year, preventing thousands more being born into a life of neglect, and we’re thrilled to have helped 11 different rescue groups with their desexing costs with the SPCA Desexing Grant. We also ran 13 successful Snip ‘n’ Chip campaigns around the country, giving out over 7,800 vouchers to help make desexing and microchipping more affordable. Over 3,000 further vouchers were issued as part of our Community Desexing programme.

In June, we celebrated our incredible volunteers with the SPCA Purina National Volunteer Awards. These awards recognise the ongoing contribution that our volunteers make to SPCA, from helping at the Centres, to fostering animals in their own homes, to raising crucial funds through our Op Shops. We had winners across six award categories, and we can’t thank our volunteers enough for their dedication.

With the support of generous Kiwis and our matching partners, our Give To Get Them Home matched funding day was a huge success, raising money for three much-needed animal transport buses. These purpose-built vehicles will allow us to transport vulnerable animals when needed for urgent medical care, relocate them between Centres for socialisation with other animals, and to get them to their new homes.

As part of our long-term plan of preventing animal cruelty and improving education on animal welfare issues, we recently launched our fourth series of SPCA Storybooks for tamariki. These books have been provided free to every primary school in New Zealand, and we are thrilled to have Suzy Cato join us as an SPCA Ambassador.

We couldn’t be more grateful for all of our busy teams, hardworking volunteers and generous donors, who helped to make everything SPCA does for the animals all possible. To see more of our highlights, watch our highlights video below.