HAND2PAW FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
Hand2Paw provides paid internships working with rescue animals as a way to strengthen connection, compassion, and community for young adults from marginalized communities, including those experiencing housing insecurity or foster care involvement.
About This Cause
Our program is structured to focus on important life and work skills, such as conflict resolution, budgeting/financial literacy, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and job preparedness. There are no other programs in Philadelphia that aim to teach youth practical work skills while assisting homeless animals in finding homes and providing humane education to the public. Through daily check-ins and weekly discussions, youth are able to build connections with staff that create a sense of trust and support that may have been absent in previous relationships with adults. We provide an environment in which youth feel safe and open, allowing them to share their stories and build upon their past experiences, and integrate new skills that reduce risks and overcome adversity. Homeless youth are a very diverse population living in a wide variety of situations from shelters to couch surfing at friends or relatives to just sleeping on the streets. Some research indicates that only 10% of homeless youth access services designed for them, and that youth disconnected from services experience greater risk for a variety of psychosocial problems including substance abuse, mental health problems and greater difficulty exiting homelessness. Our objective is to provide those youth who have faced challenges with traditional employment with opportunities to learn the skills they need to transition to long term employment in the context of working with some of the thousands of animals that enter Philadelphia's animal shelters every year hoping for a second chance. From 2011 through April 2018, our interns and staff worked in various animal shelters around Philadelphia. From April 2018 through the end of 2019, we operated a satellite adoption center for the Pennsylvania SPCA. As a result of the pandemic, we operated out of donated space at 315 Market Street in Philadelphia. In 2022, we were able to move into our very own space in North Philadelphia to deepen our impact in the community where our youth live. Hand2Paw achieves its objectives through the remarkable relationship between people and animals as a vehicle of change and growth. Bonds formed with the animals in our care allow youth to develop safe relationships and connections they may have previously lacked with the people in their lives, or at times, may have been a source of abuse and neglect, making relations with people seem risky or dangerous. Animals, however, do not pose the same difficulty, and can assist in building empathy skills that can be transferred to relationships with people in professional and personal settings. The ability to connect with co-workers and develop professional relationships within a work environment requires a set of interpersonal skills that we believe is crucial to long-term employment. The goals of our program are to facilitate learning and growth through a structured curriculum based on a resiliency framework focused on seven core components of: connection, competence, contribution, character, confidence, control, and coping. While youth are taking part in the program to learn new skills and gain experience from professionals, we acknowledge that the youth are experts on their own lives. Through helping them build their self-esteem and self-efficacy, we increase their ability to create and accomplish goals, as well as their capacity to make healthy decisions for themselves that lead to positive life consequences. Directly helping to better the life of an animal during their stay at the shelter, and ultimately finding them a forever home, creates a sense of purpose and contribution. Accomplishing set goals and becoming “experts” in animal welfare through educating the public can help redefine how their future actions will impact the animals in their lives, but more concretely, that their actions can make a direct impact on their own lives and the lives of others. Character is reinforced when we notice what adolescents are doing well and suggest to them that they have contributions to make to their communities. Confidence in hard skills such as customer service, resume and interview skills, animal handling skills, shelter protocols, budgeting, among others, is done through demonstrated and reinforced competence; this is accomplished as youth gain experience and create the self-perception that they can set and achieve goals. Through positive training methods, participants have the ability to train and alter the behavior of animals, while learning patience, empathy, reliability, and connection that can be extended to themselves and others in their life and work. Positive coping strategies allow youth to manage stress without turning to risky behaviors, which often serve as quick, temporary fixes, and possible lifelong maladaptive strategies. When we guide youth through their work to teach a more adaptive behavior to an animal, we are also communicating to the youth that their ability to cope with stress and pressures of life is a skill that can be developed and worked on through pragmatic skills and practice, such as mindfulness and conflict resolution techniques. Additionally, we assist youth in acquiring documentation necessary for future employment, completing FAFSA forms for school, opening bank accounts, obtaining government benefits and social services such as food and counseling services and state documentation. We strive to ensure every participant graduates with a job or educational plan in place. Program participants reported significant benefits from their internships with Hand2Paw. Based on post internship surveys, youth who participate in a Hand2Paw internship strongly report: • A positive job experience • Dealing more effectively with daily problems • More confidence in their ability to succeed in a job • Greater understanding of animal care (and plan to teach others) • Knowledge that there are staff and resources they can utilize to help them succeed in work and life • More confidence in their ability to solve problems that may have kept them from attending work in the past Our participants are not required to work in an animal-related field after completion of the program, but many participants choose to continue their work and advocacy for animals through professional and personal endeavors. As a program that highlights the importance of compassion and contribution for the betterment of people and animals, we are extremely proud when young people find meaningful employment that provides their community with essential services and humane education. Approximately 85% of our participants were either employed or attending school at the end of the program. We consider this a huge success for our youth and the program. As a non-profit that is committed to growing and evolving our program, we utilize youth feedback as well as emerging science and models with a trauma-informed, strength-based, anti-oppressive focus; particularly those that discuss the importance of expanding concepts of workplaces that go beyond just a paycheck, and provide an environment of support, stability, and community necessary to evoke and inspire the minds of young people.