The Kiwanis Club of Trenton will host Tricia Baker, CPDT-KA, Co-founder of Attitudes In Reverse (AIR) at the Club’s first meeting of the new year on Wednesday January 4, 2023 beginning at 6 pm at Leonardo’s II restaurant in Lawrenceville. All are welcome to attend this presentation on AIR’s mission to create a community of understanding, kindness and empathy through mental health education and awareness.
After a 20 year corporate career in marketing, Tricia Baker took the tremendous loss of her son, Kenny, recognized the need for educating our nation’s youth about good mental health, and with her family, started Attitudes In Reverse® or AIR™, which includes the AIR Dogs: Paws for Minds program. Under AIR, Tricia has been able to combine both of her passions: mental health education and dogs.
Tricia is a Certified Professional Dog Trainers-Knowledge Assessed (CPDT-KA), an American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen (CGC) Evaluator and Certified AIR Therapy Dog Trainer and Evaluator. Tricia has developed the AIR School-Based Therapy Dog program, training school staff and their personal dogs. The goal is to have at least one certified therapy dog on every school property, every day, to support students and staff.
Tricia shares age appropriate educational programs from K-12th graders. She offers parent presentations along with Professional Development for school staff. To date, Tricia has educated over 150,000 students, parents and school staff. Recognizing a need, and with the help of friends, Tricia launched a Spanish mental wellness and suicide prevention program for 8th through 12th graders. Dogs are a very integral part of Tricia’s work, including AIR’s educational programs. Administrators report that the retention rate of the mental health programs are far greater with AIR programs, as the students associate the materials with meeting the dogs. More information about AIR is at https://air.ngo/
Leonardo’s II is located at 2021 Brunswick Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. Dinner will be available off the menu for $20 per attendee. Please RSVP by January 3, 2023 by contacting Alex Treece at (609) 647-8305 or griptreece1953@gmail.com