RSPCA 2012 Gold Coast Million Paws Walk

Today I volunteered at the Royal Society for Protection Against Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Gold Coast Million Paws Walk. The fundraising walk continues to be one of Queensland’s most popular outdoor events for animal lovers and their dogs. This year the event location had to be changed to Doug Jennings Park, The Spit, as the event outgrew the previous location.

All semester long I have been working on an Event Promotion Plan and a Sponsorship Proposal for my Event Marketing and Sponsorship class on the RSPCA 2012 Gold Coast Million Paws Walk. I chose to focus my projects on this event, since I strongly believe in the cause. As the event date was getting closer, I was feeling more and more of a connection to the event. I finally decided that I needed to be involved in some way or another so I offered to volunteer (and I am so happy that I did)!


I showed up early (7:30am) to help out. I stuffed show bags for attendees for a while and then once people started showing up, I moved on to selling raffle tickets. I had a lot of fun doing this as it allowed me to walk around the whole event to see what was going on and it also allowed me the opportunity to mingle with people and with their dogs :) People were really receptive to buying tickets and the RSPCA staff was impressed with how many tickets we sold! We were even able to be on stage as they announced the raffle prize winners.


A lot of fun and exciting things were going on at the event - they has numerous food trucks, market stalls of merchandise and pet products, a live concert, and contests such as "best dressed" and "owner and dog look-a-like". They has a designated area for agility, and they were also spray painting paw prints on any dogs that were interested. They also had some reptiles and a couple of farm animals present!


All different breeds of dogs were there, of all different sizes and colors. I saw a lot of Border Collies and Siberian Huskies, which made me miss Ziggy and Sasha (and Laila too) even more than I already do!
(Since I am mentioning my puppies, why not take an opportunity to show how cute they are!)

The weather was absolutely beautiful! We couldn't have asked for a nicer day for this event. Fun was had by all - dogs and people. I had a great time and with record attendance numbers, the event was a huge success! I was even asked to return as a volunteer for next year's walk (too bad I won't be here any more). Volunteers were presented with a certificate of appreciation at the end of the day, which was really nice of them to do.