Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello,

I'm looking to reinvigorate our humane education program and get a strategy going for a summer camp in 2024.

Our humane ed program is volunteer-led, and I'd love to keep it that way. Currently the volunteers respond to calls for speakers in classrooms, offer shelter tours, and are guest speakers at a local wildlife rehabilitation center. The program is going through a transition, which offers the opportunity to see how it can be enhanced for scope and engagement. I'd like to give the kids a more activities-based curriculum to get them moving and give them a break from the classroom presentation model we've been using. 

Also, our summer camp has been cancelled for the last couple of years because pandemic, but also it suffered a lack of buy in from staff, who were drafted into service as teachers or at least compelled to modify their workflow to accommodate youngsters on campus. I'd like to explore a somewhat turnkey approach to allow volunteers to run with it. I once worked in disaster response and preparedness and we used the Prep Rally from Save the Children, which was free.  Something similar would be fantastic. 

Do any of the major animal welfare organizations offer an out-of-the-box curriculum for either classroom visits or summer camp? Does your shelter or rescue run something that we could borrow from? Any other ideas? 

Thanks so much in advance!

#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

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Sara Fitzpatrick
Community Engagement Manager
Santa Fe Animal Shelter & Humane Society
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Hi Sara,

My non-profit Life of Kai offers humane education programs virtually. I am a Red Rover-supported humane educator and I use their curriculum for my program "Kind is Cool." During the pandemic, we worked with summer camps to deliver the storytelling class virtually. This summer, we team up with Davis Kids Kamp (DKK) in person for 6 weeks to provide social-emotional learning to 150 kids from K-6.

The program description is on my website on the Home page. Just scroll down to see the 5 programs. Open "Kind is Cool". https://www.thelifeofkai.org/

 Let me know if this is what you are looking for. I can send a sample presentation of our virtual storytelling if you think this might work for your organization.

Best

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Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
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Highly recommend you looking into the Association of Professional Humane Educators for help with this, Sara. It's a membership organization dedicated to humane education efforts. 

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Stacey Zeitlin
San Diego Humane Society
San Diego CA
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Hi, Sara:

Maddie's University has an extensive course on Humane Education that is filled with ready-to-use programs. The course actually won Best Professional Development Opportunity in 2022 from the Association of Professional Humane Educators. It's totally free, so I recommend you make use of this resources! You can enroll here:
https://university.maddiesfund.org/products/humane-education

Sincerely,
Erika

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Erika Shaffer
Maddie's Fund
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Hi Sara,

The Association of Professional Humane Educators (APHE) has an abundance of resources for both in-classroom presentations and lessons as well as summer camp info. In fact, they have a whole summer camp manual you can purchase. To become a member, it's only $50 a year and it's well worth it. I believe the camp manuals are on sale at the moment too. 

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Erin Ellis
Community Engagement Director
Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe

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Foster Program & Volunteer Management Specialist
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