Restoring Emotional Balance: How Animals Help Beneficiaries of the Children of Heroes CF Cope with Loss

The “Children of Heroes” Charity Fund, in collaboration with partners, is implementing a series of therapeutic initiatives involving animals. The goal of these activities is to help children who have lost one or both parents due to the war restore their emotional balance, strengthen their trust in the world, and rediscover joy in simple things.

Among the implemented initiatives are:

• Therapeutic visits to Horse Paradise. The Fund’s beneficiaries and the guardians spend a day at a social ranch where the animals rescued from the war live. The program includes interaction with horses, art therapy, games with animators for children, and peaceful horseback rides for adults. This format helps reduce anxiety and improve the participants’ psycho-emotional state.
• Puppy Yoga. Thanks to a partnership with Lapki Puppy Yoga, children participated in yoga sessions in the presence of four-legged friends. The exercises were successfully combined with lively interaction with the puppies, creating an atmosphere of joy, trust, and unconditional acceptance.
• Paw of Support. A unique project combining reading and therapy with dogs. Within this initiative, children read books to specially trained dogs. This format of interaction helps the Fund’s beneficiaries overcome the fear of making mistakes and develops their self-confidence.

All these activities are part of the systematic support that the Children of Heroes Charity Fund provides to its beneficiaries. Interaction with animals is not only therapy but also a source of genuine emotional connection that helps children cope with loss and find inner resilience.

The Fund will continue facilitating events that help children feel safe, receive support, and believe in goodness again, even where words are powerless. After all, psychological support is one of the key areas of activity for the Children of Heroes CF. Over the three years of the Fund’s existence, psychologists have conducted over 24,000 consultations and are not stopping there because the path to recovery is a long process consisting of small but crucial steps toward inner peace.