The Winter Blanket Drive started in 2003 when the founders Melissa and Alan Riback saw a dire need to assist the shelters with blankets for the abandoned animals through the cold winter months. When we started, we were only able to assist 4 organisations with a few blankets each. The next year we started thinking of how we could help more than just 4 shelters and began getting family and friends involved.
Slowly the Drive started to expand.
In 2009 Adèle Lombaard came on board in Cape Town and helped us reach many more needy shelters and organisations. Over the last few years we have grown from donations of just R2000 to over a R114 000 in 2021. In 2022 we had a very difficult year with the aftereffect of Covid hitting us hard, we could only raise R59 400.
Please note: As of March 2018, the Winter Blanket Drive is a division of The Dogbox Project, which is a Non-Profit Organisation.
(NPO: 245-289 | NPC: 2018/093590/08 | PBO: 930066701)
The strength of the Drive is now that we not only donate blankets but also much needed dog and cat food, we help organisations cover astronomical vet bills and we sponsor sterilization campaigns.
We are animal lovers and have spent many hours volunteering and walking around shelters, there is nothing more heartbreaking. The good what we manage to do with the Drive is a drop in the ocean however every little bit does help and it makes us so proud that we can, with your help, make a difference for the shelter animals.
2023 is our 20th year running the Drive and we are hoping it will be our biggest yet …