Reprinted with kind permission from the Association of Professional Humane Educators (APHE)

Growing Organization Brings Humane Education to the Community
Susan Helmink and Mary Tiefenbrunn, CARE Center

Humane education can take place anywhere and everywhere. It can occur in a structured class or a free-flowing conversation. In either case, it is important for humane educators to consider where and how they can best reach their communities. Some members of the public do not know where their local shelter is located, or even that one exists. Even those who are aware of your humane education program may not commit to signing up for a class. One way to build awareness of your program and increase your educational opportunities is to bring your organization to the community and allow for spontaneous interactions to turn into education opportunities. The efforts of our young humane-education organization provide an example of how reaching out to the community can be beneficial.

The Companion Animal Resource and Education (CARE) Center, located in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to providing its community with education and resources that foster a mutually supportive bond between companion animals and people. As do many humane educators, we believe that the best way to decrease the number of dogs and cats that are abandoned or mistreated, and create a more compassionate community, is through education. In its first year, CARE Center has focused its outreach efforts on two fronts: (1) attending community events and (2) offering free and low-cost classes through an adult education program with a long-time connection to the community.

Attending community events, including events that are not centered around companion animals, can be part of an excellent strategy for reaching people in your area. CARE Center regularly sets up a booth at the local weekly farmers' market (the market organizers offer booth-space at a discount for community groups).

The CARE Center booth offers free informational brochures from both national animal protection agencies and local animal welfare organizations. These brochures address a variety of pet-related topics, including: pet selection, training and behavior, general care, and safety. Providing information in this format can help to start a conversation and enable us to send our visitors on their way with reference materials in hand. We also sell books that address common behavioral issues such as house training, managing multiple-dog households, and separation stress.

You might be surprised at how many people approach our booth with specific questions about pet-related concerns; it causes us to wonder where they would have turned if they had not stumbled across the CARE Center booth. Certainly, events centered around pets also present wonderful opportunities to reach people of all ages and CARE Center attends events sponsored by the local humane society to compliment its humane education efforts.

Partnering with the adult education arm of the Urbana public school system, which has a solid history of serving the community and a large mailing list, has also proved invaluable in facilitating CARE Center's humane education efforts. Urbana Adult Education provides CARE Center with classroom space, takes care of registration, and allows us to use their copier. This enables our young organization to focus on developing the content of our classes and relieves us of a heavy financial and logistical burden.

Near the end of its first year, CARE Center learned that integrating its outreach efforts with existing community resources can result in unexpected benefits! A local television newscaster read about CARE Center's classes in the adult education brochure and invited us to participate in a morning news segment on pets; CARE Center now appears on the news every six weeks to discuss a different humane education topic.

We met a homemade-dog-biscuit company at the farmers' market, and they have generously donated free samples for our dog training classes and a recent fundraising event. And, of course, the relationships CARE Center has made with members of the community are most important of all. A woman who attended our Selecting the Right Dog for You class signed up for our dog training class a few months later with a wonderful dog she adopted from the humane society. We were both thrilled and humbled to think we played a role in bringing these two together and helping them form a life-long bond.

CARE Center envisions one day having a facility for humane education classes and a resource library; however, we will continue to take CARE Center to the community to maximize our humane education efforts.