The Program
Our Compassion Education and Violence Prevention Program is Evidence-Based and Proven Effective. It was Published in Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol. 6, Number 1 January 2008, a Peer Reviewed Journal. Listed in NREPP, Federal Government's Registry of Proven Effective Programs. Winner of Governor Dick and Tunky Riley's "WhatWorksSC" award for programs making the most impact on student improvement in 2016. Recipient of the Secretary of State's Angel Award, awarded to programs with the most effective and efficient use of funds. Unprecedented statistics for improved behaviors and academic outcomes including a 62% decrease in aggression and, a 55% decrease in out-of-school suspensions among students receiving Healing Species.
This program intercepts the mentality of crime, victimization, frustration, anger, and sense of isolation found in many childhood lives today. These are the attitudes that so often cause disruptive behavior and lack of concentration in the classroom. Our program intercepts old negative ways of relating and delivers to students a new way of experiencing the world around them. We provide tools the students can use in daily situations that might ordinarily trigger anger and challenge their self-esteem, self-worth, responsibility, ambition, hope, and ability to concentrate.
We take in dogs no one else will and rehabilitate them. While some become adopted others become Classroom ambassadors
The dogs immediately captivate the students' attention and imagination. They are living examples proving that your past does not define you. They teach our students that no matter what they have been through, they have valuable gifts to contribute and are so very loved. They teach that love can overcome life's challenges, not violence or hate. They teach "hands-on" lessons demonstrating the value of a gentle voice, a gentle touch, and finesse over aggression to get results from others. Each lesson teaches principles of self-reliance and "bootstrap" goals of overcoming one's environment.
Our History
How We Got Started
Healing Species was founded in Orangeburg, SC in 1999 when attorney Cheri Brown Thompson created the Violence Prevention/Intervention through Compassion Education™ curriculum, the first ever animal-assisted Violence-Prevention curriculum to be endorsed by a state board of education, in response to the discoveries she made during her legal studies in criminal law.
Focusing her studies on “depraved heart” criminals, Cheri became greatly troubled by the link between violence toward animals and violent crime in society – finding that 99% of convicted violent offenders were abused as children and, in turn, inflicted abuse on animals before committing violence against humans.
The relationship between previous abuse, animal cruelty, and perpetuated human violence led to a founding principle of Healing Species, which is to touch and help heal the heart of a child, invoking empathy – the missing emotion in many violent offenders. ​