When you mix kids and animals, good things can happen. And so can bad things. Emily Beighley of Sacramento, a junior at the University of California, Davis, hopes to increase the benefits and mitigate the problems through a project that will provide materials for teaching children about animal care and advocacy. She has won a prestigious $10,000 Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship to support the "Legacy of the Humane Child Program," which, beginning this fall, will serve two children's homes affiliated with the foster care system in Sacramento, and then expand to select public schools. The Donald A. Strauss Scholarship Foundation annually awards at least 15 scholarships for projects and education-related expenses to juniors at colleges and universities in California who have demonstrated a commitment to public service and leadership potential. A foster child during her teen years, Beighley says at-risk children, particularly while in foster or group care, need positive reinforcement for developing a healthy self-image. Caring for animals teaches children that they are needed and that they can make a difference, she says, while learning about animal advocacy teaches them to stand up for what is right. "Teaching kids to be compassionate and respectful toward other living creatures -- animals and human -- is an investment in our collective future," says the classics major who cares for eight rabbits, two birds, a box turtle and a cat in her home. Building locally on a national program that operated last year, the project will: * encourage teachers to read aloud animal-friendly books to students in kindergarten to grade 3; * have students in grades 4 to 6 create comic books that feature themselves as heroes who help animals in some way; * arrange field trips to the Farm Sanctuary, a shelter for abused farm animals in Orland; * provide teachers with information on alternatives to dissection, chick-hatching projects and classroom pets; * and provide teachers with information about the relationships among domestic violence, child abuse and animal abuse.