0
Adopt 
Our Rescue Work 
Shop 
report a cruelty 
Copyright Dublin SPCA 2023
Charity number CHY1047
Registered Charity Number 20001735
Education
Our Education Strategy acknowledges that animal welfare education and learning for both children and adults will be essential to achieving our vision where every animal is treated with compassion and respect, making it socially unacceptable to mistreat and be cruel to any animal. Through our education services, we impact over 150,000 people each year and focus on promoting kindness and empathy towards animals.
Educational talks 
Shelter Tours 
Kids Camps 
Work Experience 
Educational talks
The NSPCA provides virtual or in person talks to schools, colleges, and community groups across the country that have fundraised for the animal shelters.
We can work with all ages of children and students and are happy to create an age/ability appropriate session tailored for you. At the NSPCA, we feel it’s important to educate from school-age that cruelty towards any animal is not acceptable and that animals should be treated with kindness and respect.
If your school or youth group are interested in taking on a fundraiser for the NSPCA shelters, please get in touch with our fundraising team by emailing: fundraising@nspca.ie
Shelter tours
The NSPCA Special Education Programmes
The NSPCA provides several options for additional needs educational tours, talks and short courses. We can work with service providers to create an age/ability appropriate session tailored for your service users needs.
Tours last 1.5 hours and include a talk and a tour around our NSPCA shelter in Rathfarnham, Dublin 16 to see many of the animals, both residential and available for rehoming. The tour includes a visit to the Dog Rehoming Kennels, the Cattery, the Small Animals area, as well as the resident goats, ducks, chickens and pigs. You can take a walk around the fantastic 1.5km Perimeter Walk around the grounds of the shelter which has stunning views over Dublin City, the Hellfire Club and Dublin Bay (weather permitting). There are picnic benches where your group can have their packed lunches and enjoy seeing the animals in their paddocks, as well as the wildlife living on site.
If you would like to book a talk online or in person for a group with Additional Needs please get in touch with Brendan O’Connor at brendan.oconnor@dspca.ie
Kids Camps
Join us for a fun & educational Kids Camp!
The NSPCA run kids camps for children during the school holidays. During the week, your child will participate in many different activities including; arts & crafts, baking, slime making, nature trail walks & hunts.
As education is extremely important to us at the NSPCA we will include some educational presentations to help educate the younger generation on responsible dog ownership, caring for animals and animal safety and welfare and get to meet some of the animals on-site at the shelter (this will depend on what animals are in the shelter and cleared by our vets at the time of the camp).
We are extremely lucky to have a wonderful dog training team and when trainers are available they will contribute to the camps demonstrating obedience classes, fun tricks and enrichment for dogs.
All camps take place on site at the NSPCA Dublin centre in Rathfarnham, Dublin 16, the camp is 10am – 3pm daily.
If you have any queries before booking or for group bookings please email our camp department here
Work experience
The NSPCA offers Work Experience for Transition Year Work Experience or Community Service students as well as Leaving Cert Applied (LCA). Work experience is Block Weeks Only and takes place on site at the NSPCA shelter in Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Work experience at the NSPCA animal shelter is very hands on and physical work. Students must have a keen interest in animals and should not be afraid of handling or being around them. Animals will jump up, pull on the lead, scratch, bark and require lots of exercise and are walked in all weathers – hail, rain or snow. It’s a noisy busy environment. Experience is Non-Veterinary.
To help with our work experience programme and the vital day to day rescue work that we do at our shelter, we do ask that ALL students fundraise in advance of their work experience.
TY Applications are now closed!
Applications are now closed for our 2026/2027 Transition Year Work Experience Programme at our NSPCA Dublin (Rathfarnham) shelter. If you would like to be added to the cancellation list, you can do so here.
Please note this application form is for our cancellation list only. You will only be contacted if a place becomes available, which may be one to two weeks in advance of a placement date. As places are in very high demand, availability on the cancellation list is limited, so we’re unfortunately unable to guarantee a placement.
Applications are still open for our Longford and Wicklow shelters.
Apply now: