48 Small Yet Impactful Acts of Kindness for Animals

Did you know that by simply being kind, you can increase your energy level, self-esteem, and even life expectancy? Who couldn’t use more of all those things? Acts of kindness don’t need to be random or time-consuming. Make compassion for animals a daily practice with the following list of 50 small yet impactful acts of kindness, many of which you can do with your students. You’ll not only improve your day but also make a measurable difference in the life of an animal.

All Animals

1. Teach a kind lesson.
2. Share a kind lesson with another teacher.
3. Order Share the World.
4. Leave free PETA Kids bookmarks in library books.
5. Donate a humane book to your local library.
6. Apply for a job at PETA!
7. Include a donation in your will to support PETA’s work for animals.
8. Stage a protest or hold a demonstration.
9. Schedule a classroom presentation with TeachKind.
10. Make and use an insect rescue kit with your students.
11. Spend an hour picking up litter in your neighborhood.

Animals Used for Food

12. Pledge to go vegan.
13. Leave a stack of vegan starter kits in your school’s teachers’ lounge or on your gym’s information table.
14. Order a class set of A Chicken’s Life and read it with your students.
15. Download A Fish’s Life and read it with your students.
16. Bake vegan cookies for someone.
17. Donate vegan canned foods to your local food bank.
18. Plant bee-attracting flowers in your garden.

Animals Used for Clothing

19. Pledge to be leather-, fur-, and wool-free.
20. Clean out your closet, and gather any items made using leather as well as fur, wool, and other animal parts. Place them in a box, and have your students and colleagues bring in animal-derived materials from their homes, too. Once the box is full, donate the items to a homeless shelter or secondhand store.
21. Urge Need Supply Co. to stop selling fur.
22. Tell Forever 21 to stop selling wool.
23. Urge Lululemon to ditch down.
24. Order a class set of A Cow’s Life and read it with your students.
25. Teach a lesson on the true cost of wool. TeachKind has lessons for grades K–2, 3–5, and 6–12.

Animals Used in Experiments

26. Pledge always to buy cruelty-free products—tell your students about those that you use in the classroom and that choices that may seem little to us make a big difference for animals.
27. Use PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies database to search for cruelty-free cosmetics, personal-care products, and more.
28. Download PETA’s Bunny Free app to check if a company is cruelty-free while shopping. It’s available for Apple and Android.
29. Download Froggipedia, Apple’s 2018 App of the Year, and share it with your students. Dissecting animals in classrooms is a cruel, archaic, and pointless method of exploring their anatomies.
30. Order a class set of A Rat’s Life and read it with your students.
31. The next time that you run out of toothpaste, shampoo, or a cosmetics product like mascara, replace it with a vegan and cruelty-free item.
32. Send “Get Well” cards to the dogs who are suffering at Texas A&M University.

Animals Used in Entertainment

33. Pledge never to take your students to roadside zoos, marine parks, circuses, or other places that hold animals captive and use them for entertainment.
34. Plan a humane field trip or fundraiser.
35. Download An Elephant’s Life and read it with your students.
36. Download A Tiger’s Life and read it with your students.
37. Watch the documentary Sled Dogs, and urge companies to stop sponsoring the deadly Iditarod race.
38. Visit an accredited sanctuary.

Animal Companions

39. If you’re prepared and able to, foster or adopt a homeless animal. Never buy animals from pet stores, and never keep animals as “pets” in your classroom or school.
40. Collect change for chained dogs.
41. Lobby your city council or other legislative body to enact dog-chaining bans or restrictions, pass spay/neuter legislation, make sure that local animal shelters require spaying and neutering before adoption, and get pet shops out of local malls.
42. Take your dogs on a long, leisurely walk. Then cuddle them and give them lots of love and attention.
43. Order a class set of A Dog’s Life and read it with your students.
44. Make emergency plans for your animal companions so that they’ll survive natural disasters.
45. Volunteer at your local open-admission animal shelter.
46. Have your students collect gently used towels, bedding, and other supplies in a box in your classroom. Once the box is full, donate the items to your local open-admission animal shelter.
47. Sponsor a doghouse for a lonely “outdoor dog.”
48. Save the phone numbers of local animal control agencies and emergency veterinarians in your phone.

This list isn’t exhaustive. There are countless ways you and your students can be kind to animals each and every day. Share this list with your friends and coworkers, and e-mail us at [email protected] to tell us about the acts of kindness that you do for animals.