Research backs up what most people already know: Children turn to animals when experiencing stress, anxiety, depression or loneliness. Connecting homeless pets who need socialization and affection with children who experience joy and comfort by spending time with them is the manifestation how we can all be more Beautiful Together. We create empathy-based youth programs at our sanctuary for children and teenagers who are currently living in foster care, group homes, at-risk situations and underserved communities.
Today, we celebrated the closing of a fantastic six-week empathy-based youth program at the Sanctuary! We’ve had a wonderful time with these fifteen 1st-5th graders in partnership with Hargraves Community Center.
Our program structure includes a thoughtful combination of academic enrichment, creative education, pet therapy and outdoor exploration. All programs are designed so that children may experience a curative connection to pets, people and nature.
This session, we read books, made animal habitats, played with puppies, worked with tangrams and made animals out of sunlight-changing pony beads. We took nature walks with binoculars and enjoyed dancing around the rolling hills of our beautiful sanctuary space. And, finally, we finished off this creative empathy-building program with watercolors, superhero capes and a joyful closing celebration!
Many thanks to Leslie Davis and a fantastic team of volunteers who helped to make all of this happen!
If you would like to contribute to our efforts in providing nurturing empathy-based youth programs for children in underserved communities while giving our rescue animals with additional socialization and affection, please consider donating at the link below. If you are not in a position to donate, please share this – and we are always welcoming additional volunteers to assist with our programming so that we may reach more students!
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