The Hermanus Animal Welfare Society hosted a successful ‘Starry Starry Night’ as part of a creative effort to raise essential funds whilst giving guests a special experience in return:
Hermanus, South Africa (28 February 2025) — The Hermanus Animal Welfare Society recently hosted a successful night under the stars as part of a creative fundraising effort. The Starry Night event united people not only to gather on the green, dine under starlight and enjoy the best of Hermanus’ summer evenings, but also to share this special experience in exchange for bettering animal welfare.
Creative Fundraising Counts
“Fundraising in the current economic climate is NOT easy and charities like HAWS have had to get more and more creative,” Chairperson Shana Essakow tells Good Things Guy.
“People want something in return for their support and ‘experiences’ is a favourite.”
Joan-Anne Harris got on board to put on the event to great success—within days it was sold out!
On the golf course, a table fit for 130 guests played the setting for good food, conversation and song from Lize Mynhardt while Vanessa Alexander performed fire dances and Andre Du Toit brought all the fun to the auction.
One Starry Night, Good News for Many Areas of Need
The Hermanus Animal Welfare Society hope to make around R100,000 from the event once the online auction is wrapped up—all of which will go to the many facets that come with caring for animals.
“It costs us about R400k a month to run our facility and to provide care, food, shelter and medical treatment to the pets of families in our communities. We distribute 3 tons of cat and dog food into communities to help supplement food for their much loved pets,” says Shana.
“We run and operate a full service animal hospital with a vet, 2 vet assistants and cleaning staff – our account every month for medicines and supplies for the clinic is R100K a month.
“We sterilise almost 2000 animals a year, 50% of that is at our costs as the owners can’t afford the cost thereof. Our clinic is an extremely busy one with about 600 consultations a month. We have 21 full time staff at the facility, who all show up every day with love, care and compassion in their hearts and regardless of what they saw yesterday, they show up in the hope that today they will again help animals. We have about 100 animals in our care every single month. We are run and managed by a committee of 8 volunteers.”
Needless to say, the funds raised will contribute to many necessities.
The Emphasis is Hope
“We don’t post horror stories of animal neglect and abuse, that doesn’t mean that we don’t deal with it every day, we most certainly do,” Shana adds.
“We choose to focus on the positive side of the work we do, we focus on hope. The hope that we will find the perfect home for every cat and dog in our care, we hope that we can save the animals that come into our clinic, we hope that we will raise enough funds to ensure the long term future for HAWS, long after the current committee and team are have left.”
Sources: GTG Interview
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