Animal Assisted Therapy for Special Needs Children

Hello Valued Supporters

We are pleased to report that we have completed yet another successful year of working with special needs children and adults in Jerusalem. Most of the groups were children, but we also accepted some groups of adults with disabilities. As usual, our participants came from all communities – Jewish, Arab, religious and secular.

This year over 60 groups participated in our program.  Two of those groups participated in the program for the third consecutive year. These are children from the school for children at risk with severe emotional problems. In view of the fact that this year they were sixth graders, in addition to the therapeutic goals we had in previous years, we decided to focus on leadership and preparation for high school. We wanted to empower them and sharpen their skills as leaders. We did some new activities geared towards their age group – for example, we went into the tigers’ house (when they were not present of-course!) and prepared interesting enrichment activities for the animals. Another day we went behind the scenes in the peccary exhibit and prepared their food for the entire day. These activities helped the group feel part of the zoo team and strengthened their senses of responsibility and competence. This is a good example of the advantage of animal assisted therapy occurring in the zoo environment as opposed to a simple petting zoo.

We are grateful to you, our valued supporters, for making this wonderful program possible!

The Animal Assisted Therapy Team at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo