Projects > Healing Species
The Healing Species is a violence intervention/character education outreach program.
Through the assistance of rescued dogs, we teach children a process
from which to understand and overcome abuse, neglect, and grief while
at the same time teaching life skills in self-esteem, conflict resolution,
anger management, and respect for the feelings of others. The
children learn to gain success through acts of compassion and
responsibility instead of returning "violence for violence".
The Healing Species lessons are about healing through learning to
nurture and love, even if you have never been nurtured or loved. Through
this healing, our children will be more able to learn, to concentrate,
to focus, to turn away from violent patterns of relating, to
gain self-esteem, and to embrace the attitudes necessary to succeed.
We will take students through a practical approach to
gaining essential life skills and character traits such as
responsibility, compassion, empathy, follow-through mentality,
integrity (when "no one else is looking"), visions for success,
planning, cooperative effort, and seeing situations
through the eyes of others.
As a result of the Healing Species' work, thousands of
children have been taught the life-altering message of
compassion, empathy, and responsibility. Most impressively,
teachers and guidance counselors who have experienced the
Healing Species report an 80-100% improvement in students'
ability to walk away from fights, concentrate in class,
offer kindness instead of bullying, learn appropriate
ways of reacting to a bully, and take responsibility
to help others. Additionally, standardized test scores
and grade point averages have risen among Healing Species students.
You can download a PDF version of the first lesson for this program here
