President’s Pen: May 2024

By: Melissa Logan

Hello APHE!

Welcome to our new feature! We are replacing our Humane Education Quarterly newsletter (HEQ) with a blog - EmpowerEd by APHE. This blog will still feature some familiar content including featured lessons, book reviews, and research in the field, however we are increasing the frequency and expanding the scope of our content. As always, we encourage members to submit articles to share knowledge and perspective.

I’m thrilled to share with you some of the work your APHE Board of Directors has been doing over the past year and what’s coming up on the horizon.

APHE is dedicated to empowering YOU - to promote empathy through education. Here’s a brief look at what we’ve done this past year to support you and our community of humane educators towards this mission. 

We’ve launched a partner page! Featuring members’ and supporters’ organizations, we are highlighting groups that are innovating, inspiring and providing humane education. Is your organization featured? If not, fill out this form to join the many organizations who support our mission, vision and work.  

We also had our greatest engagement with our Educator’s Choice awards this year! These awards help to highlight the incredible work people are doing to make a positive difference in their communities for animals, people and the environment. We will be launching these awards again in February 2025, so watch for the nominations!  

We also recently hosted our annual national conference in Buffalo, NY to provide our members with valuable in-person networking and professional development. The theme of this conference was Unleashing Compassion: Exploring Empathy in Erie County and I’m heartened at how fully this conference embodied the theme. It is all thanks to the presenters, attendees, sponsors (with great appreciation to our Visionary Level sponsor, Maddie's Fund), exhibitors, and the incredibly friendly and welcoming people in Buffalo that we worked with to host our conference. 

Attendees at the 2024 APHE National Conference #ThanksToMaddie

Here’s just one example of the kindness and empathy that was showcased at our awards dinner. Every year at the awards dinner (previously the Auction), we play a game called Heads or Tails. I’ve heard from long-time APHE members that this game can be quite competitive. For this game, folks buy beads in advance with funds raised supporting our Nathania Gartman Memorial Scholarship Fund. Predictions are made, coins are flipped, and wrong guesses means you lose beads. When we were down to two competitors, instead of the nails coming out, we all witnessed kindness and generosity with both competitors sharing beads back and forth until it was a tie at the end. Instead of a tie breaker, the audience demanded that both of the finalists be winners, and how could we argue? (My heart also grew three sizes that evening). We hope both of these incredibly kind and compassionate educators join us next year in Kansas City (as they both won a free conference registration!). We will soon be putting out a call for speakers for the 2025 conference, so stay tuned! 

Final heads and tails competitors cheering for one another (APHE awards dinner) 

Finally, the board invested time into surveying our membership and developing a three year strategic plan to expand our reach, improve the quality and access to resources and professional development, and foster an inclusive and diverse community. I’d love to hear what you think! Let me know if you have any questions, comments or just reach out and say hi. My email is president@aphe.org. 

I hope to see you all on Groupsite or at the next Coffee & Connect. Have a great summer and best of luck for those hosting camp over the next few months!

Best, 

Melissa