Bird Sanctuary

 wildlife sanctuary, aviary (birds)

Parrot Refuge in Serenity Park.
The idea of a Serenity Park was developed by psychologist Loren Lindner, an adjunct professor at Santa Monica College who was serving as clinical director of New Directions, a rehabilitation program for homeless veterans.
In 1999 (the year that Dr. Lindner accepted her New Directions position) she and avian rehabilitator Jeannie White co-founded Earth Angel, a rescue organization for cockatoos. Dr. Lindner placed her own two cockatoos at the Ojai facility, because her new responsibilities at New Directions did not allow her to spend much time with the birds. For five years she made the trip from her home in Los Angeles to Ojai once a week to see and care for her birds and others placed at Earth Angel.
Dr. Lindner started bringing some of her New Directions patients to Earth Angel to give them a break from the VA program, and she found the veterans were transformed by the experience of caring for the parrots.
Dr. Lindner realized that the therapies she had been using to help her patients understand others’ feelings (i.e. empathy building, sensitivity training, anger management and compassion) might be augmented directly by caring for the birds.
Dr. Lindner decided to make the experience a form of "trans-species" therapy and asked the Department of Veterans Affairs for some of the unused land here on the grounds of the West L.A campus.
The VA donated an abandoned basketball court with broken asphalt for redevelopment, and agreed to let Dr. Lindner build a parrot sanctuary as part of New Directions' existing work therapy program.
Opening in May 2007, six aviaries shaded by eucalyptus trees would house the parrots.
Dr. Lindner and a group of volunteers, including an architect who provided his time and designs pro bono, transformed the barren slab into an urban avian oasis that complements the facility's 27-acre Veterans Garden, which is cultivated by by vets as part of the Horticulture Therapy Program.
New Directions.
New Directions was founded in 1992 by three formerly homeless veterans to provide food, shelter, and rehabilitation to other veterans who were homeless and chemically dependent. The program now helps more than a thousand vets a year with a variety of services including job training and placement, legal help, financial assistance, counseling, remedial education and long-term drug and alcohol treatment.


www.parrotchronicles.com/2007/features/parrottherapy/ve...