Connection • Growth • Care • Discovery • Kindness
After School Program
Our after school program, hosted through the Enrichment Kids platform, offers children infinite opportunities to engage with nature, connect with our food systems, befriend animals typically viewed as “food”, learn, grow, express their creativity, get dirty, and enjoy the experience of being a kid! Participants in this program spend one day per week for two months at our beautiful sanctuary and education center, helping out with animal care, working in the garden, doing arts and crafts, discussing interesting topics, and sharing ideas. Learning occurs naturally due to the opportunities inherent at the sanctuary and the natural curiosity of young minds.
Multiple sessions offered for the Fall 2024 term on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Field Trips and School Groups
We offer a variety of opportunities for school groups and field trips, ranging from service days and enrichment opportunities, to creative art explorations, to lessons aligned with Next Generation Science Standards.
To schedule a Humane Ed experience for your students, please send an email to visit@ranchocompasion.org
Camps
We are pleased to now offer summer camps at Rancho Compasión! Our week-long day camps at the sanctuary are packed with fun and unique opportunities to connect with our animal residents, learn how to garden and grow food, be immersed in nature, and so much more.
Summer 2024 Camps were a success; please sign up for our newsletter if you’re interested in learning more about our future camps!
We are available as a field trip location for other camps during the summer. Reach out if interested!
Why Compassionate Education Matters
Our Friends and Food Youth Education Program at Rancho Compasión is all about nurturing compassionate, thoughtful reflection and relationship-building with our other-than-human kin. That includes our rescued farmed animal friends, the native ecosystem, the watershed, and the compassion garden. Part of that means telling the truth about the animal agriculture industry from which our animals have been saved, and about the consequences and challenges that modern methods of animal agriculture create for ecosystems, laborers, and all living things. At Rancho Compasión, we offer the unique opportunity, through the lives and experiences of our rescued animals, to tell their story on behalf the trillions of animals used for food around the world today.
Raising awareness about these issues helps us be imaginative about alternative paths forward. This is why we integrate our Compassion Garden into our curriculum. Our students discover the wonders of gardening, learning how to identify the vast biodiversity of the garden, care for and harvest the flowers, fruits, roots, and veggies, work in tandem with the cycles of nature, and cook with (and eat!) the fresh food we cultivate together.
All are welcome—especially those who would otherwise not have access to places of sanctuary. Our goal is to provide these programs free-of-charge to historically disadvantaged and marginalized public school youth. That’s why we’ve built a need-based scholarship and sponsorship fund for all of our youth programs! Please use the appropriate links on each program page to share a bit about your needs and situation for scholarship consideration, or reach out to caroline@ranchocompasion.org with any questions. If you would like to contribute to our scholarship fund, please follow this link ❤️