INDRALOKA ANIMAL SANCTUARY

Indraloka Animal Sanctuary’s mission is to educate the community, especially children, on ways in which we can better care for ourselves and the environment while helping animals in need.

The Need
For many years, Indraloka has provided an educational program called Hopeful Heroes, and through it we have done an impressive amount of good work, but it has long been our ambition to evolve the education program and expand upon it. The ideal program we envision and the need it fulfills, is simply put, a cycle of healing from child to animal, and back to child, both of whom often arrive at the sanctuary in desperate need of restorative healing. Programs will especially welcome troubled youth, students with learning disabilities, and children with emotional/behavioral struggles in order to provide a safe haven to heal, learn, and share in the cycle of wellness with the sanctuary residents by their sides.
Research indicates that spending time with animals offers a vast array of benefits, including increased patience and mental energy through observing animals in their natural setting, lowered blood pressure and improved overall health. Taking care of animals also teaches responsibility and stimulates feelings of trust, openness, and companionship, as people not only feel more comfortable being themselves around animals, but they also discover things about themselves.
One of the more recently studied areas is how animals can help our youth with psychological conditions. The National Institute of Mental Health recognizes animal-assisted therapy as a form of psychotherapy for treating depression and other mental disabilities. The benefits of animal interaction are endless, and many studies have shown that the simple and reciprocal act of petting an animal releases endorphins and a variety of other “feel-good” hormones that can help patients dealing with anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Caring for animals also takes the focus away from the individual and redirects the attention to the needs of the animal in care. By gaining that responsibility, the individuals find purpose within themselves.
While the benefits of spending time with animals are too plentiful to list in their entirety, the opportunities to do so in a caring, edifying and didactic environment are extraordinarily limited. That limitation only increases by a disturbing degree for at-risk youths. Indraloka Animal Sanctuary is excited to meet this need by evolving and expanding our education programs in an effort to provide humane education to at-risk youth through a series of humane education programs tailored to each grade level.
The benefits of our program would ideally be as far reaching as our imagination would allow. We would ultimately like for any youth in need, of any age, race, creed, or background, from the furthest reaches of the globe, to always be assured of a place at Indraloka. While it may seem ambitious to think that Indraloka can reach a worldwide audience, we feel that if we’re not at least aspiring to that, we’ll surely fall short at helping disadvantaged youth who would greatly benefit from the program. So, the scope of our vision knows no boundaries, but pragmatically, the scope of our focus would start locally and expand.
More immediately we plan to continue building on the local community support we’ve worked years to develop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and surrounding areas. The degree of growth and understanding we have already cultivated is tremendously encouraging, and has expanded rapidly during the last few years. That momentum is the driving incentive to continue development.
We are also striving to make the sanctuary open and available to groups like The Friendship House, the Children’s Advocacy Center, KidsPeace, and NEPA Youth Center and Shelter. These are dynamic therapy and service organizations that work for children in need of care in public schools and private homes all over the state of Pennsylvania, all year round.
We at Indraloka believe so strongly in community partnerships. We see the potential to engage with and impact many other groups in the community, including the Lackawanna, Wyoming, and Sullivan County Offices of Juvenile Probation, and students from other public and private schools in Lackawanna, Wyoming, and Sullivan Counties and beyond.
Implementation of the Hopeful Heroes Program
We would start implementing more foundational educational pieces immediately upon having access to the resources to do so. We firmly believe that kindness on our plate influences kindness everywhere else. So, our approach will be to not only feed the guests healthy, plant-based meals but we would teach them how to prepare these meals for themselves. The nutrition-based healing won’t stop there, however. The children will also learn how to prepare the meals and treats for the many animals at the sanctuary. We feel that this type of immediate, hands-on guardianship and caregiving promotes a tremendous sense of selflessness, serenity and fulfillment, and there’s nearly nothing as curative as that.
We also plan on including curricula surrounding other recuperative endeavors such as art, music, writing, as well as some therapeutic physical activity. We desire this to be a healing haven, a garden where kindness education propagates for children year-round.
One of the most trusted and conscientious members of the Indraloka family is a teacher with over 20 years experience. Sarah Thornton has a plan in place to model a summer camp with many of her current students. In addition, we have already partnered with a group in Scranton, Pennsylvania, comprised of extremely low-income families and children, several of whom are homeless. The schools nearby have little resources themselves to be any kind of significant, long-term help. Therefore, It is our intention to have these children visit the sanctuary as often as possible, to engage with the animals and to spend time appreciating and learning to understand a more nature-based environment.
Sarah Thornton and Mike Friedlin, both directors of education, will work closely with Katherine Mohr, education and engagement coordinator, and a gifted team of sanctuary staff and volunteers who are ready and able to make impactful changes in the youth of our community and beyond. Mike Friedlin is an environmental science educator with 35 years of teaching experience, currently at the collegiate level. Both Sarah and Mike’s teaching expertise extends to special needs and emotionally traumatized children as well as gifted children.