My Nonprofit Reviews

I am writing to express my sincere thanks and appreciation for all of the work and dedication of the Project YES staff. The 2011-2012 school year, marked our 7th year of running an Animal Assisted Intervention program at Kenwood Trail Middle School. While it was our first year working with the Project YES team, it was by far our best!

Our program is made up of male and female students in 6th, 7th and 8th grade who have social-emotional and/or behavioral disabilities. They have more obstacles than their peers and we have always felt they were in need of out of the box support and programming to meet their individual goals in life. Our students quickly became fans of the service animals in training that came weekly to our school. I lost count of how many times during the week students would ask “is it a dog day,” “are the dog’s coming Thursday?”

While most of our students had been exposed to dog’s from our former programs we saw quickly the student’s increased motivation and interest in working with dog’s that would eventually be placed with to help someone with a disability. Our student’s seemed more invested in training the dog’s “correctly” and showed ownership in their work. I have numerous anecdotal stories of student’s growth as a result in working with our four legged friends. Students improved their frustration tolerance, communication, and team work as a result of training the dog’s for a higher purpose.

Our program’s success would not have been possible without the professionalism, expertise, and flexibility of the amazing volunteers and staff working with Project YES. Working with various organizations over the last 6 years we can say this was the most enjoyable experience we have had to date.

I look forward to continuing our partnership with PawPads and the Project Yes team at Kenwood. It has been a phenomenal year and I am grateful to all of the staff that made this possible.

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