Woodland Park Zoo’s Hope & Healing offers uplifting community experiences for people facing
life-altering challenges.
This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s May/June 2024 issue, a benefit of AAM membership.
A child stared at their tablet’s Zoom screen engrossed in the actions of a small penguin chick waddling around the rocky outdoor habitat at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. The child, along with others at a local children’s hospital, had just voted on this new penguin chick’s name. When the winning name was announced—Yolanda—the child used American Sign Language to say “I love you” to the penguin. The collective hearts of the participating zoo staff and child’s care team melted.
The child, a long-term patient at the local children’s hospital, is not able to visit the zoo in person. While they are nonverbal, they found a way to clearly communicate and share the emotional connection and bond they formed with Yolanda.
Nature and animal encounters are proven restorative or bonding experiences for people and can have many positive effects on health and wellbeing. As an urban oasis, the zoo offers 92 acres of green space and a variety of animals—from the tiniest arthropods to the enormous rhino, Glenn. Yet, for individuals facing ability, cultural, economic, or geographic barriers, the zoo has not always been accessible. We have sought to address these barriers through an extensive Community Access Program (CAP) in which the zoo partners with hundreds of human-service organizations across our region to annually provide 100,000 free tickets along with discounted food and virtual experiences.
Even with CAP assistance, however, a zoo visit is still out of reach for some members of our community who face ability and cultural barriers. For these individuals, such as the child who helped name Yolanda, we created Hope & Healing, a partnership with community organizations that helps make a zoo visit, with its joyful animal and nature experiences, possible.
What We Offer
Hope & Healing works with eight partners serving audiences facing ability and cultural barriers, including newly settled refugees, LGBTQIA+ youth, children in long-term hospital care, families who lost a child, tribe social services and tribal foster children, and children receiving the state’s most intensive behavioral and mental health care through the Children’s Long-Term Inpatient Program. With a small but growing number of partners, we build close relationships with intentionality and customize an experience at the zoo that best serves the individual’s needs.
Depending on the needs of the audience, Hope & Healing experiences can be one-time, intimate family visits; semi-regular virtual or in-person small group tours; or large community experiences on zoo grounds. The Journey Program, a bereavement service through Seattle Children’s Hospital for families who have lost a child, is one of our Hope & Healing partners. Many of the families in the Journey Program previously visited the zoo with their late child. Returning to this space—even for a joyful experience with their surviving child—can be too overwhelming and emotional for these families.
Beyond free CAP tickets, Hope & Healing provides a customized experience and support specific to the needs and emotional barriers of these families to provide a restorative and healing visit with animals and nature. With Journey Program staff, we co-design an annual family picnic for more than 150 individuals that includes animal encounters, games, and art projects memorializing their family.
“These moments mean the world and really do help ease our grief for an afternoon,” one Journey family told us after the visit. “It is so special that a large organization like the zoo takes the time to give back to families walking such a difficult road of loss.”
For the children’s hospital, we offer ongoing experiences for children who can’t leave the facility due to their need for long-term isolation. These children can participate in a monthly 30-minute Zoom call to meet an animal or two and learn from the keeper about the animals’ personality and characteristics. For a brief moment, these children can experience the respite and joy of a zoo visit.
In celebration of Thanksgiving, during one of the regular Zoom experiences at the children’s hospital, the children explored the diets of tree kangaroos and met Elanna and Finni, two of our forest-dwelling tree kangaroos. Starting at the zoo’s commissary, the children engaged with our staff while they prepared the food for the tree kangaroos. The kids were able to “pack their own food” for the tree kangaroos using craft kits our commissary team caringly created for them containing detailed paper versions of corn, green bananas, rainbow chard, and other tasty vegetables the tree kangaroos love. After their virtual visit with the commissary, the children got to see Elanna and Finni up close over Zoom as they enjoyed the food that was prepared for them. The kids even pretended to feed Elanna and Finni some shared favorites, like spinach.
It was through another regular Zoom call that the kids had the rare opportunity to name penguin chicks, which formed a lasting bond between the children and the penguins. For the child who was able to name penguin chick Yolanda, this opportunity gave them hope that they would become well enough to leave the hospital and meet Yolanda in person. The child wrote a letter to our penguin keepers to share this goal and the emotional connection they have with Yolanda.
We are creative in our offerings, utilizing the assets the zoo has readily available and what is included in our base operating budget, such as the free admission tickets provided through CAP, animal encounters, private tours, carousel rides, naming opportunities, and much more. Tapping into this creativity, we also partner with Make-A-Wish to offer semi-regular visits for Wish children to keep their spirits up while they are waiting for their “big wish.” We’ve also granted big wishes, including being an animal keeper for a day.
In the spring of 2023, Make-A-Wish approached the zoo about a child who wished for camera equipment to ask if we could host this child as they received their gift. We were happy to accommodate them. On the day, the child was welcomed to the zoo by a cheering tunnel of zoo staff and volunteers. They then fed a penguin before receiving their new camera equipment. Accompanied by our on-staff photographer, the child then went on a tour of the zoo, taking pictures of animals and nature with their new camera. The day concluded with a rhino feeding for the child and their family. While a zoo visit was not the child’s primary wish, we were able to host the wish experience and provide an unforgettable, uplifting experience for the child and their family.
What Can You Do?
Beyond the forested green space of Woodland Park Zoo, other museums and zoos can have a similar impact on their community, especially for audiences in need of a recharge. Visitors already see us as spaces for a contemplative and restorative experience. Employing the Hope & Healing framework, organizations can build on this already restorative environment to create uplifting experiences for community members most in need.
The Hope & Healing framework has three key components: audience, assets, and approach. First, organizations should identify the target audience they are attempting to reach. Looking at your community, are there individuals with significant life challenges who face barriers to attending your institution and could benefit from an uplifting and restorative experience?
Once you have an idea of the audience you would like to serve, consider what assets you can offer potential community partners already serving these groups. What is unique to your institution that could be joyful for your intended audience? Do you already offer behind-the-scenes tours and experiences that can make someone smile? How can you make a pre-existing experience, such as a tour, private and tailored for a specific audience? What would your intended audience connect with?
With a general idea of what is possible at your institution, you can then begin building a relationship with community partners, reaching out to learn more about their populations’ needs and how you could work together to create an uplifting and healing experience for them. Consider what accessibility accommodations should be made, such as welcoming an immunocompromised individual before you open to the public.
If your institution makes the space for an offering like Hope & Healing, you will positively impact not only your community but your staff. Personally, Hope & Healing has brought me a level of personal fulfillment that I had not experienced in my other roles in the nonprofit field. Seeing a child’s face light up when given the chance to name a penguin—and how special that moment was for the child’s care team as well—is one memory I’ll cherish for life.
SIDEBAR
Measuring Our Success
We have many anecdotes about the uplifting experiences we offer through Hope & Healing, but due to the sensitivity of the populations we serve, we are careful about the data we collect and our evaluation methods. These experiences are meant to be joyful and uplifting, and we do not want to take away from the positivity by creating a burden of answering questions and participating in surveys afterward. Therefore, we primarily rely on internal staff observations and informal and survey feedback from the partner organization. We are always listening to our partners’ needs and evolving these experiences to best serve their constituencies.
The need for Hope & Healing in our community surpasses the capacity of our team of two. Fortunately, by maximizing available resources without incurring additional costs, we have encountered minimal financial barriers to implementation. Instead, this work has attracted additional financial support, enabling us to enhance accessibility for our participants by, for example, providing language interpreters and upgrading technology for our Zoom experiences.
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