Interview – Part One! Mary Smith, Executive Leadership Team and Sheila D’Arpino, Director of Research, of Maddie’s Fund
October 8, 2016Interview – Part Two! Mary Smith, Executive Leadership Team and Sheila D’Arpino, Director of Research, of Maddie’s Fund
October 11, 2016
I must admit that I have been remiss over the years when it came to neglecting the importance of Community Cats Education. What about Kids? Ideas and Tips for Community Cat Education is such an important hurdle. We need the next generation to get excited about Community Cats!
Over the years, when I was at the helm of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, I often felt that we were too busy. Busy with trapping, rescuing, and spaying/neutering cats that we were often left with little remaining energy! This meant we didn’t have a solid program for education in the community. Sure, we did the girl scouts and brownies and internships with the kids, but we didn’t strategically go out in the community with an education plan.
When Heidi Colonna of HSUS spoke to the Boston Homeless Cats group in early September, she talked about creating a plan around Common Core standards. She discussed how we can use Community Cats programs to help education within those standards! This meshes with wanting students to learn math, language arts, and science, while learning the necessary components needed to satisfy Common Core!
If you or your organization doesn’t have the ability to design a detailed plan, even little events here and there do help. Below are some tools and links that might be helpful when designing ideas!
1. Podcasts
Heidi Colonna of HSUS did a great podcast on Humane Education and if you haven’t checked it out you should go to this link and have a listen! What a great way to get additional ideas. Also, find podcasts that kids will listen to that you can enjoy together.
2. Children’s Books
Valerie Ingram and Alistair Schroff wrote a couple of children’s books, Nobody’s Cats and Out of the Cold. You can find them on Amazon! We love finding ways to promote reading, along with education of Community Cats!
3. Coloring Books
Coloring has become all of the rage. I can’t believe how many adult coloring books are out there. Well, there is a coloring book for community cats! I can’t even tell you how much I love this and you HAVE to check it out!
4. Building Feeding Stations
While we didn’t have much of an educational program in the early years at the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, one program that I did love was that once or twice a year we would have workshops on how to build a feral feeding station! These workshops were run by Bruce Fuller and it was fantastic. He would prep some of the work and bring the feeding stations in pieces. Folks attending the workshop would then assemble 4-6 feeding stations in one afternoon! The upshot was that the groups usually got to take home one feeding station. They were always so thrilled to be bringing a feeding station back home at the end of the day and we also were able to keep the remaining ones for our use!
Bruce designed these stations back in the 90’s. Take a look at his old set of plans. We had about 20 of these feeding stations scattered around the Greater Newburyport area and they were lifesavers.
The moral of the story? Education comes in all shapes and sizes and you can make of it what you want. Just make sure you try and do something to help spread the word about the different ways we can all help our Community Cats!
