Humane Education
Furry Friends Humane Education Program
Our Humane Education Program is an outreach effort designed to provide resources for the community in the form of School and Community Programs, Special Events, and a Virtual Classroom.Each year, Florida is one of the states with the highest instances of animal cruelty in the country. Furry Friends believes that educating our youth will help tackle the systematic challenges facing the animals, people, and communities in our region and break the cycle of animal abuse by providing a curriculum that fosters empathy and compassion for animals.
Our Virtual Classroom
The Furry Friends Humane Education Program provides virtual classrooms with intensive resources, tasks, games, activities, assignments, and interactions while fostering the 3C’s: curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. All lesson plans are in alignment with National Education and Common Core Standards in science, math, language arts, health and social studies. All activities focus on character education concepts such as compassion, responsibility and empathy. Despite the classroom being virtual, several activities call for service-learning projects aimed at helping animals and encouraging self-efficacy and good citizenship.
The virtual classroom always gives participating students the opportunity to fulfill community service hours. Students of the School District of Palm Beach County are required to obtain a minimum of 20 community service hours to graduate from high school. Community service is also a requirement for many scholarships and college entrance programs. Students can complete these hours by completing our virtual assignments! Students will learn new skills while satisfying scholarship eligibility requirements or enhancing their resume.
Community Events
Learn and Discover More with our Humane Education workshops, lectures, and talks. Hosted in person and streamed virtually, listen to experts in their field teach about different subject matters. Check out our events page for upcoming talks!
Online Series
Click here to access our Humane Education Video Series . Here you will find how-to videos , enrichment DIYs, educational tidbits and Animal Caretaking 101!
Art Contests
Twice every school year we host a art contest! Visual art teachers in Palm Beach County can submit artwork on behalf of their students based on the theme. Selected artworks then are on view at Furry Friends for several months. For submission guidelines including how to submit student artwork, open this google form.
Printable Activity Books
Click here to download our printable PDF books!
Under 16 and need community service hours?
Under 16, but need hours and still want to volunteer? We have plenty of other ways for you to get your school hours with us! Please let us know if you would be interested in any of the following:
- Distribute marketing materials for us to local shops, stores, and feed stores. Help us build our community partnerships and relationships by advocating our our behalf! You can come pick up flyers, one sheet, brochures, and business cards from us anytime.
- Fundraise for us. We’ve had young supporters do all sorts of things to help us raise funds! Get creatvie and host a lemonade stand, try peer-to-peer fundraiser, have a car wash, sell cookies… the sky is the limit!
- Make us enrichment toys from your home. There’s tons of ways to reuse/recycle old materials to create enrichment for our animals. Both dogs and cats benefit from enrichment while staying at the shelter. Click here for some ideas!
- Host a pet food drive for us. We ALWAYS need supplies. Food Drives help us sustain throughout the year. Click here for our Publix wishlist.
- Become a social ambassador! Repost/ Or create social media content for us. By becoming a virtual advocate, you help spread the world to a larger audience right from the comfort of our phone. Click HERE for our virtual Foster program
- Foster for us. Did you know you get 3 hours of community service each day you foster? Email lwiles@furryfriendsadoption,org to inquire about avaible animals to foster.
- Start a club at your school. Teach your peers about our mission and animal rescue. Find a teacher that will help you host this club and we will provide all the lesson plans. You and your friends can help create generational change!
- Photograph or video events for us. We always need content. Email mpetersen@furryfriendsadoption.org to find out about our upcoming events. Bring your camera and start snapping away! We love new photos for our pets bio’s, our website, and our marketing materials.
We truly hope this helps you out just as much as it would help us out! Please log and keep track of your hours, and once completed, schedule a time to come in for them to be signed off on. For any questions, please contact Meagan Petersen at mpetersen@furryfriendsadoption.org
Schedule a Group Class
Art Contest Winner Sofia Johnson’s painting ” Tall Dog”
