The Way of the Donkey New Empowerment Donkeys.

The Way of the Donkey uses miniature donkeys in empowerment activities with young people. We support all young people. However, our special focus is on supporting young people who have experienced trauma or loss, have disabilities or are neurodiverse, are in foster care, or have other challenges. Donkeys have traits that, if emulated, support greater happiness, resilience, and self-regulation. Learn more here: https://donkeyeeaw.org.

We have been taking our donkeys to schools, organizations, and events in the Veneta and Eugene area to allow young people to walk the donkeys and to teach these lessons. We have achieved excellent results. Our goal is to develop, implement, and evaluate these strategies. When we deem them to be effective and replicable, we will license and train others.

“As they internalized these empowerment life skills, our students have already begun to demonstrate greater resilience, socialization, and coping skills. Now, quite frequently, we see students applying the learning acquired in their interactions with the donkeys in their daily lives.” T. Picado, BEST Afterschool program.

We are looking forward to summer 2022 activities. Unfortunately, a short time ago, we lost one of our beloved donkeys, Bella (white and gray in the photos). We have identified two donkeys that we can purchase that are very well trained. The owner has offered a price that is far lower than they are worth, given their excellent training.

By coincidence, in 2019, Nancy Willard, director of The Way of the Donkey, published a book entitled The Way of the Donkey. In this book was a page on Donkey Shows. On this page are pictures from the trainer who has offered these two donkeys at a great price. Camille, the gray, and Suede, the dark brown.

The funds provided will help us to offer donkey empowerment services in Veneta and Eugene. This will also support the further development of our approach so that we can train others from throughout the world to use The Way of the Donkey approach.