By Analy Vega ’25
Wallingford residents drove up to 300 Church Street on “Giving Tuesday” to receive heartwarming hugs from therapy animals in a drive-through fundraiser hosted by Soul Friends.
Soul Friends is a non-profit organization serving 10,000 Connecticut families and children with its animal therapy services. The organization offers a diverse range of programs, from a free six-session equine therapy program for veteran and first responder families to an eight-session psychotherapy plan incorporating trauma and attachment principles.
Soul Friends CEO Ms. Kate Nicoll established the nonprofit 20 years ago after recovering from a spinal injury. Her organization came about as a result of seeing how animals effectively responded to her pain.
Since its inception, Soul Friends has been providing therapy sessions with dogs and other small animals in their office in Wallingford. Patients’ interactions with animals illuminate how they are responding to stress, injury, trauma, or simply a change in their environment.
Over the past 16 years, Ms. Nicoll has created five group curriculum-based programs for children that have consistently demonstrated positive benefits through outcome measures and research. These benefits include increased eye contact for children with autism and ADHD, increased hopefulness for children living with trauma, and improved peer relationships for teens.
Soul Friends received its first grant in 2021 from the Latham Foundation. Since then, the foundation has given Soul Friends another $10,000 to fund sessions for veteran and first responder families. Despite the large sum, there is an imminent need for continued donations due to the high costs of animal maintenance, staff training, and labor.
The daily administrative tasks that Soul Friends manages can also be difficult. Matching, scheduling, and organizing appointments for animal therapy takes effort. During therapy sessions, Soul Friends must pay for two staff members on-site and the use of a barn.
NBC Connecticut predicted that Soul Friends was $12,000 short of their annual budget in 2023, which inspired Giving Tuesday’s drive-through. Soul Friends hopes to receive additional grants in the future such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding from the town of Wallingford.
According to Ms. Nicoll, “Soul Friends has presented at national and international conferences on the healing benefits of all kinds of therapy animals” in hopes of raising money for its services.
“Incorporating the animals, we’re able to provide an environment that is a motivating factor for kids to participate in therapy,” said Ms. Liz Caplan, an animal equestrian therapist at Soul Friends. “For a child who maybe is lacking self-esteem [and] needs some confidence boosting, we’ll have dogs do a new trick with them.”
Ms. Nicoll said that when times get challenging, she reminds herself of the organization’s mission statement, “to provide innovative clinical and educational programs that promote the healing benefits of the human-animal bond and nature for children, families, young adults, veterans, and first responders.”
Soul Friends sees value in animals’ connection to humans and the experiences these connections can provide. The organization believes that animals can help families with emotional health and mental health struggles in a way that humans cannot. One can find more about the organization’s cause at https://soul-friends.org/blog/.
