2022 Year in Review

This year brought records and milestones for RedRover’s programs, and we have you to thank for making our lifesaving efforts such a success in 2022. Check out our special Year-in-Review to see how each of RedRover’s programs brought compassion, comfort, and new beginnings to animals and their people.

RedRover Relief

Gypsy and her family

To date in 2022, we’ve helped more than 470 pets receive lifesaving veterinary care through our Urgent Care grants. We’ve helped pets like Gypsy, a young dog who was struggling to eat due to a dental infection and needed teeth extracted, and Casper, a sweet kitty who was having repeated urinary blockages and needed emergency treatment to survive. These two cherished pets will now be able to spend the holidays at home with their families – healthy, happy, and oh so loved. 

Through our domestic violence assistance programs, we are helping more people and pets than ever before escape abuse together. We’ve received a record number of Safe Escape Grant applications again this year and provided nearly 10,000 safe nights of boarding for pets – including dogs, cats, turtles, and even a gecko! This year we also reached a milestone in our Safe Housing grants, surpassing $3 million in grants awarded to create pet programs at domestic violence and animal shelters. Each year we move closer to our goal of ensuring that 25% of domestic violence shelters are pet-friendly by 2025. 

Casper and his mom

For nearly three years, RedRover’s Emergency Boarding grant has offered assistance with pet boarding while a pet owner is hospitalized or so ill that they’re unable to care for their pet due to COVID-19. During that time we are proud to have been able to provide nearly 1,000 nights of boarding for pets so that their owners could rest and recover knowing that their furry family members were being taken care of. The number of applications for this assistance has been steadily declining in 2022, and we’re now at a point where it looks like this assistance is no longer needed. So, this will be the last year the Emergency boarding grant is offered. We are so thankful to our donors for allowing us to provide this vital assistance during the pandemic. For Carlene, this grant meant she could focus on her recovery while knowing her dog, Sydney, was safe and happy:

“I want to start off by saying thank you so much for the boarding assistance for Sydney. I was truly at my lowest point and to know that she was well taken care of when I couldn’t care for her means the world to me.”

These lifesaving grants are only possible because of supporters like you. Pets like Gypsy, Casper, and Sydney say thank you!

RedRover Relief DV

It takes a community. That’s a pretty common sentiment for us here at RedRover: Collaboration is indeed at the heart of all the work we do. And it certainly holds true for our work supporting domestic violence (DV) survivors and their pets. 

We’re working hard to engage communities in not just the discussion around the link between human and animal violence, but also in the solution of providing survivor-centric programming that supports both survivors and their pets. This means bringing together everyone who interacts with survivors and their pets, from domestic violence organizations, animal organizations, and veterinary clinics, to social workers, law enforcement, and legislative representatives. This list could go on.

Over the last year, we’ve been busy attending and presenting at conferences, hosting workshops, and engaging and supporting members of the veterinary community. This includes RedRover President and CEO Nicole Forsyth’s recent IDEXX webinar, staff member Ketia Johnson’s interview with Ruthless Kindness, and our joint project, Don’t Forget the Pets, with Greater Goods Charities’ Rescue Rebuild program. 

It’s not just about raising awareness or providing our Safe Housing grants; we’re also there to walk organizations through the process of creating a pet housing program that helps both people and pets escape abuse and heal together. We know there are real challenges to creating pet housing programs – from staffing, to funding, to concerns around safety – but we’re committed to helping organizations overcome each and every one.  

We all have a role to play in supporting DV survivors and their pets – it truly takes a community.

RedRover Responders

The RedRover Responders team had a huge year in 2022. We completed a total of 19 deployments across 12 states – the most we’ve ever deployed in one year! With a variety of program offerings, our team worked incredibly hard to assist communities during natural disasters; worked alongside our partners on cruelty and neglect cases; collaborated with domestic violence shelters to create safe housing for pets; and partnered with local animal welfare organizations across the country to sponsor wellness clinics, vaccines, trap-neuter-release programs, and other services to support humane communities for animals and people.

Our Community Programs work, which supports animal organizations and other local partners to provide services, education, and resources for pets and people in underserved communities, officially kicked off this year. We were fortunate to work with groups like the Parker Project, providing the Navajo Nation with free and low cost veterinary services; Dog Aide, based in Detroit, Michigan, which has provided over one million bowls of dog food and spayed/neutered 1,800 animals; and the Humane Society of Marlboro County in South Carolina, which is working tirelessly to provide outreach and safe enclosures to dogs who live chained outside in their community.

We’ve have been absolutely honored and humbled in our work this past year with the RedRover Responders team, our staff, and volunteers. We’re incredibly grateful for all who make this work possible – it is truly life-changing for the animals, people, and communities we assist!

Help us continue our lifesaving work for animals. Your year-end gift will support all of RedRover’s programs, helping pets and families find safety and comfort when they need it most.
Make a year-end gift >>

RedRover Readers

In 2022, RedRover Readers focused on expanding and refreshing our curriculum to ensure it is more inclusive and accessible to all students and educators. We added five new program books and launched an all-new, on-demand online workshop at a discounted price of $35 per educator. We audited and revised our existing curriculum, ensuring we are using inclusive language, asking neutral, nonjudgmental questions, and offering opportunities to take the perspective of people from many different cultures and backgrounds.

We held 10 RedRover Readers workshops and trained 129 volunteers and educators to use the program, including our first in-person workshop since 2020! We continued existing partnerships, such as our collaboration with Dr. Catherine Faver at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Sacramento Native American Health Center. We also formed new partnerships, including one with the City of Sacramento and the 4th “R” afterschool program.

We continued our partnership with the Sacramento Native American Health Center (SNAHC), piloting the EAGLES program: Early Ages Gathering to Learn Empathy through Stories. SNAHC, RedRover, and local American Indian Education partners co-developed Teaching Guides for each story and planned six weekly sessions to pilot the materials. We’re looking forward to more opportunities to grow and expand our program in 2023!

Kind News

In 2022, we reached more than 190,000 children with Kind News magazine! We are beyond grateful to all of our sponsors, educators, and champions who helped make this happen.

More than 4,000 new educators signed up this year to receive our digital issue and educational resources, and, thanks to generous sponsors, over 250 new classrooms received the magazine through our Adopt-a-Classroom program!

We continued to focus on making our content as accessible as possible to all children, and to assist those efforts we worked closely with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant Dr. Worokya Duncan to develop outreach strategies to new audiences. Over the last year, magazine issues featured cool careers with animals, the secret lives of fish, healthy teeth, and highlighted a special Mexican holiday, Día de Muertos, and the role of the xolo dog.

Teachers across the country told us how they were using the magazine to support their students’ social and emotional learning, spark curiosity about animals, develop empathy, and empower kids to make positive change.

“I love using Kind News in my classroom. I use it during my social emotional time to meet the needs of the students; it’s the perfect way to teach kindness to animals and the world around them!” -Sarah Askeland, Third grade teacher, Machesney Park, IL

“Kind News is an important resource that I have used in my classroom for multiple years. I love that the magazine helps students  develop healthy relationships with animals! The digital version and the features that come with it, such as read-aloud, make it possible for me to share this resource with all students!” -Grades 3-5 teacher, Watonga, OK

“My happy little curious group of kinders love to see pictures and listen to me read the articles. This is often a part of story time that the kids can’t wait to share. Lots of fun, engaged learning!” -Mrs. Glazier, Kindergarten teacher, Burbank, WA

“My students ADORE the articles about the good deeds [for animals]. They realize that each of them can become a hero, too!” -Grades 2-5 Teacher, Reese, Michigan

To learn more about how you can adopt a classroom or subscribe for a teacher or child, visit KindNews.org.