Just a few weeks back animal lovers flocked to Sathutu Uyana Park to help find homes for homeless puppies and kittens. The initiative called Puppy Love, was the brainchild of Minusha Wickremesinghe, the strategic initiatives coordinator for TNL Radio Network.
“Puppy Love was a pet adoption initiative. We tied up with the Lucy Trust, who got in touch with several local animal shelters and rescuers in order to find animals that needed homes, and also with Pets V Care Animal Hospital, who wormed, vaccinated and health checked each animal prior to the event. We were also sponsored by Alliance Pet Insurance who provided free policies to the first ten adopters and 10% off each policy thereafter at the event. Hayleys Agro Animal Health division and Pedigree came in thereafter to provide free samples of pet products to the adopters at the event,” Minusha explained.
How was the response? It turns out, if there is anything Sri Lanka is abundant in, it’s the intrinsic fondness we have for furry critters.
According to Minusha, the project was a huge success. “We were actually very pleasantly surprised at how well the project was received. It was amazing how many people contacted us, either to help out with the initiative or to adopt.
We initially intended it to be a one-time project, but now we’d definitely love to do this again, particularly as we were able to re-home over 65 puppies and kittens, and we saw a demand for even more. If there are so many people willing to take in a stray animal, there’s no reason why any of these puppies and kittens should be homeless, so long as a platform is provided to facilitate adoption,” Minusha said.
“We have sponsored and organised several projects in the past through our CSR division, TNL Action, for which we have won many awards and commendations. We’re all big animal lovers, and felt that with the backing of three radio stations within our network, we could possibly do something to help ease the situation of stray animals, and to get people proactively involved in what we perceive to be a pretty widespread issue in Sri Lanka,” she added.
When asked if she plans to make the project a regular event, she says it’ll probably be a yearly event. “But we’re not certain. We’re still recovering from being overrun by 65 puppies and kittens!”
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