Karly Noel, Vice President of Operations and Education at RedRover, the publisher of kind News, introduced herself to RCK. She presented on the work she and her team at RedRover do – only part of which is publishing kind News. RedRover, based in Sacremento, CA, has three arms to their work: RedRover Responders, RedRover Relief, and RedRover Readers.
The RedRover Responders program currently has just under 5,000 active, trained volunteers in the United States and Canada who are deployed to emergencies, shelter displaced animals, care for animals in stressful situations, and educate communities on including animals in disaster preparedness planning. RedRover Relief provides funding in two different ways to help pet owners enduring economic hardship. One way is through urgent care “gap” grants which are given to owners of pets requiring expensive emergency veterinary care. The other way is through the provision of funding for boarding and veterinary care for pets whose owners are in domestic violence shelters. RedRover Readers, the arm of their programming that produces and publishes kind News children’s magazine, is a social and emotional learning curriculum that aligns with educational standards in North America. Through this arm of their services, they provide educational materials and training to teachers in the US and Canada that engages young readers in stories of working with and caring for animals, with the ultimate goal of instilling compassion for and the creation of a sense of responsibility to animals in those readers.