Christina Ding – Fall 2020 Award Recipient

Our next Get Involved Community Engagement Award goes to Christina Ding, a freshman at Gunn High School who volunteered at Animal Assisted Happiness (AAH). At AAH, she was given time to play with the farm animals and help clean animal pens.

Her most difficult and memorable experience was cleaning the duck pond, which came in two parts. First she worked on the smaller pens with the to clean up hay, replace water buckets, and sweep. From past experience with goat pens, she was able to get it done quickly.

Next came the pond, which was full of dirt that had seeped into the water from the ground. Although it was tough work, she helped bucket murky water out of the pond and replace it with clean water. She later writes that although it covered her leggings in dirt, it was really eye opening to see the happy ducks in clean water.

From Christina’s experience at Animal Assisted Happiness, she was able to gain new insight into what it was like to work with farm animals and gain personal knowledge as well as courage. She was also able to bond with her fellow volunteers and manager. Lastly, she learned the importance of cleaning, which continues to be a useful skill. View the project interview here.