A-listers attend official launch dinner of Thanda Inja
The project aspires to build an animal clinic to offer affordable veterinary care to previously disadvantaged and rural communities.
High profile guests attended the official launch dinner of Thanda Inja in Kempton Park on Thursday night.
Claire Johnson, Corlea Botha, Martin Bester and Schalk Bezuidenhout graced the evening with their presence. Private investigator Mike Bolhuis also attended to support the project.
The Thanda Inja project aspires to build an animal clinic to offer affordable veterinary care to previously disadvantaged and rural communities.
Bezuidenhout embodied the role of master of ceremonies. He delighted the evening with hilarious comedy-skits and introduced co-founder of Thanda Inja, Cheryl Gaw, Bolhuis and Bester’s band.
Gaw spoke about the Thanda Inja initiative and highlighted their challenges and highlights so far.
“For the last four years we’ve done outreaches every week to sterilise animals in areas such as Daveyton,” Gaw said.
“We realised we were getting ourselves into trouble, because word spread like wildfire and people from rural areas across South Africa called to request sterilisation for animals.”
She said at this stage they did not have sufficient resources to assist everybody.
Thanda Inja has partnered with the Gauteng Department of Rural Development to help them to establish a proper location from where to offer affordable veterinary healthcare services.
According to Malcolm Gaw, co-founder of the project, they host five fund-raisers in one month to raise funds to help those who can’t afford healthcare services for their animals.
“We’re not saying that commercial veterinary care is too expensive. It is just that not all pet-lovers in the country can afford commercial rates for the same care. That’s why we wish to build this animal hospital, in addition to pop-up veterinary clinics in mobile buses.”
With mobile pop-up clinics, they will not only offer their service in Benoni, which is where they intend to build the hospital, but to areas across South Africa.
Their aim is to be able to sterilise pets in rural areas and to educate the youth on how to properly take care of pets. They want to sterilise most of these animals that could be potentially neglected in these areas.”
