AFTER a one-year hiatus, a newly elected RSPCA committee has given the Albury Million Paws Walk the go ahead for 2019.
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The local branch were unable to host the popular event earlier this year, due to a lack of available volunteers.
The community has rallied in response to a call for help in June, resulting in the reappointment of Dr Arthur Frauenfelder as president, and the appointments of Lauren Black as vice-president, Naomi Burns as secretary and Jenny Bannam as treasurer.
The committee was elected on Tuesday evening.
Dr Frauenfelder said it had been a great day for the Albury RSPCA.
“It’s fantastic – all the positions we wanted have filled have been filled,” he said.
“Not only do we have the standard president and secretary type positions, but we also have a volunteer coordinator, we have an events team, and it really makes a huge difference.
“We now have people who have said we can’t let this happen, we can’t let the RSPCA fold like it did in Wagga.”
We had a mind-blowing response to that call out, there’s no other way to describe it.
- Dr Arthur Frauenfelder
The Albury branch put out a call for volunteers back in June, following the cancellation of the Million Paws Walk.
Dr Frauenfelder said the response to that call had been overwhelming.
“We had a mind-blowing response to that call out, there’s no other way to describe it,” he said.
“It was just one of those things – people kept coming.
“We’ve got a lot of volunteers now who just want to be volunteers, they don’t want to be on the committee or anything, they just want to help.”
While the cancellation of the 2018 Million Paws Walk was a low point, Dr Frauenfelder said the group was in a better position now than it had been for several years before.
“Like any volunteer we’re always happy to have anybody who wants to help on board,” he said.
“The good thing is that we’re now looking at a period of consolidation.
“All our new volunteers have hit the ground running, they’re all working within the existing skillsets they have brought to the table.”
The Million Paws Walk had been held in Albury every year since its inception in 2000.
It is the RSPCA’s major fundraising event each year.
The 2019 event is slated to go ahead thank to the extra volunteers, based at Noreuil Park in Albury.
