Animal Assisted Happiness

Our mission is to enrich the lives of youth with needs through barnyard animal interactions at our Smile Farm and mobile visits, creating moments of joy and happiness throughout our AAH community. We provide barnyard buddies so children and their family members can ‘experience the smiles only animals can bring’. Our vision is a “Million Smiles”. Our barnyard buddies include mini-horses, a mini-donkey, alpacas, goats, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, pot bellied pigs, chickens and doves. We provide 3 programs so that all kids with need can ‘experience the smiles only animals can bring’:

1. AAH Mobile Barnyard Buddies. Our AAH rolling barnyard van visits special education classrooms, rehabilitation hospitals, and camps/programs thoughout Silicon Valley.  We visit, on a predictable and scheduled basis, so that kids with need can interact with our smaller barnyard animals (mini goats, rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens) to form lasting relationships with an animal of their choice. We typically provide one-hour visits daily, Monday-Sunday and have AAH Volunteers help us on these visits.

2. AAH Smile Farm Private and Group Visits. We recognize that each child is unique and responds differently. We’ve also found that it takes multiple visits to the AAH Smile Farm for a child to become comfortable and to ‘choose’ their animals to interact with at the Farm. We provide private Family and Group Visits so that your child can interact with our animals at their own pace, with minimal distraction. Our 2.5 acre AAH Smile Farm was designed and built by kids for kids, and whimisical with lots of space, and different animal interaction areas. We are centrally located at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale with plenty of parking and ADA compliant. We can arrange for a private 1:1 visit for your child or a “field trip to the farm” for children and youth with need where our AAH volunteers will help.

3. AAH Vocational Education. Our Vocational Education Program, launched in 2016, was initiated on the premise that all youth, typical or with need, desire to feel accepted and have a sense of purpose.  Our program teaches youth (middle school and high school) the basics of animal care including feeding, grooming, and farm maintenance. While this “work” provides the valuable help to the volunteers who manage the farm, more importantly, the youth are learning and practicing life skills (listening, following instructions, asking questions, organizing, being attentive, and having responsiblity) and gaining a sense of purpose. We work directly with classroom teachers to understand skills and behaviors their students are practicing so that we can design a ‘right for them’ vocational education experience at the AAH Smile Farm.

AAH does not charge for our programs and are funded entirely by donations from community organizations, corporations, foundations and individuals.

AAH Smile Farm
Baylands Park, Sunnyvale

Corporate Mailing Address:
1030 E El Camino Real #279, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
650-887-0887