Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers Inc

Teacher training:this year, heart has been operating the certified humane education specialist (ches) program nationwide, acquired at no cost from the academy of prosocial learning in january 2025. Ches provides high-quality training for traditional and non-traditional educators, offering two self-paced and three instructor-led courses and maintaining the only registry of credentialed humane educators. Affordable tuition ensures accessibility for teachers, mental health professionals, parents, caregivers, and others.we have been preparing this year to conduct a high-impact project to train 2,000 teachers in puerto rico this fall, reaching 247,000 students. In collaboration with the puerto rico department of education and federacion protectora de animales, heart will lead day-long workshops for approximately 250-300 teachers in each of seven regions to promote the welfare and protection of animals. Eight lead teachers will be certified through ches to support program sustainability. We will also be providing lessons and activities for k-12 teachers and we will have live translation services. This initiative addresses the island's stray animal crisis, neglect, and threats to wildlife and ecosystems while embedding empathy, prevention, and accountability in classrooms, creating lasting, scalable change by empowering educators to spark compassion in thousands of young people.this spring, we conducted our 45-hour, 3-credit humane education "solidarity, not charity" professional development course via the nyc public schools after school professional development program. The course, which qualifies schoolteachers toward a salary differential, focuses on enabling students to deeply engage with the unique qualities of the community they are serving and address issues that impact animals and people within that community.heart has partnered with the global federation of animal sanctuaries (gfas) to support its 200+ accredited sanctuaries in engaging young people. We provide free training and resources for members developing or expanding k-12 humane education programs. In march 2025, we hosted the webinar "effective humane communication techniques for sanctuaries," focused on compassionate engagement with youth and other visitors, and it is now publicly available on gfas's website.

Community engagement:one of our foremost priorities this year has been advancing our comprehensive renaming and rebranding initiative, and we made substantial progress. We engaged key stakeholders and community members whose feedback was instrumental in both the selection of our new organizational name and the development of our brand assets. This collaborative approach has ensured that our new identity reflects the values, mission, and vision of the organization while strengthening our connection to those we serve. We are preparing to roll out the introduction of our new name, brand messaging, and visual identity in the first quarter of 2026.we continued to promote heart's resources widely, managing our google ad grant, optimizing social media, and posting program blogs. To support humane education and new york state compliance we raised awareness of its benefits and provided free access to our teaching materials across multiple online platforms.

Educational resource development and distribution:to make our vast array of resources in our website library more accessible, we continued developing mini-units by topic, organized by grade band. This year, we launched a critical thinking mini-unit with strategies and activities to help young people recognize and navigate influences like social media and advertising.we continued to promote and share our six resource manuals: our k-12 food and climate guide with 11 lessons; our k-5 and secondary school justice for all guides, totaling 49 lessons; our k-12 humane education resource guide, with 40 animal protection lessons; our k-3 exploring the lives of farm animals guide with 14 lessons; and our pre-k guide, kindness for all, with a 7-lesson curriculum. We also promoted our remote learning collection of activities as well as our teachclimate.org climate literacy website, and we shared our everyday circles cards, a toolkit of 180 humane education/social and emotional learning activity cards pertaining to a range of animal, environmental, and social justice topics.