When Rosie the baboon and Scooter the brown Capuchin went to visit the residents of the Los Angeles Ronald McDonald House, their motives were not entirely selfless.
The visit was part of the outreach program run by the Wildlife Education class at Moorpark College’s Exotic Animal Training and Management program. While the outreach program benefits students and the community, the animals also benefit because the visit provides them with behavioral enrichment, according to EATM professor Kris Romero.
Second-year students in the Wildlife Education class organize the EATM outreach program. The class breaks into teams of four to five students. Each team is responsible for choosing a community group, scheduling the visit, preparing the animals, and conducting the presentation. The entire class goes on all the visits so that the other 35 students can observe and learn from the presentations.
“We want to expose students to situations that they might encounter when they are working in the real world,” said Romero. “And we want to share this unique resource [the animals] with the community.”
The Wildlife Education class visited the Los Angeles Ronald McDonald House on Friday, Nov. 3. The mission of the Ronald McDonald House is to provide families of sick children with lodging close to their hospitalized child, and to insure that children have family support during their medical treatment.
EATM students also visited a group home run by Children of the Night, a private non-profit organization dedicated to assisting children between the ages of 11 and 17 who are trying to escape a life of prostitution. The theme of the presentation was animal careers.
When EATM students conducted an outreach program at the East Ventura County Sheriff’s Station, they brought animals that officers are likely to encounter on the job. The officers were taught what to expect from the animals and how to react if they come into contact with them.
The outreach program provides students with experience conducting presentations in many different environments and in front of a variety of audiences, including older people, children of all ages and partially-sighted people, said Romero.
“You can do all the planning in the world, but you always run into something unexpected,” she said. “It gives them time to think on their feet.”
Click the video link below for an exclusive slideshow presentation of MC’s EATM visit at the Los Angeles Ronald McDonald House.
