Education is essential to successful captive parrot care. It provides an avenue for captive parrot caretakers to insure a quality life for their avian companions. An educated, prepared person is much more likely to maintain an interest in his/her captive parrot and provide a long-term, quality home.

All too often caretakers obtain a parrot without fully understanding their needs or how to interpret and successfully manage many of the behaviors that captive parrots demonstrate. This can lead to abuse or surrender of the animal.

MAARS currently has a quarterly parrot care class and the executive director of the organization offers one on one in-home consultations with parrot caretakers. MAARS would like to expand and augment this offering in the following ways:

• Expand the current website to include an online assessment and evaluation capability.
• Purchase online search engine capabilities to ensure that captive parrot caretakers can easily find the services that MAARS offers.
• Expand the current course and consultation materials to include a customized manual that can be left with parrot caretakers. This would include step by step instructions to improve parrot management and facilitate behavior records to assist with follow up consultations.
• Expand the MAARS Senior Staff training materials and capability to increase the number of staff able to provide behavioral consultative services in a consistent and professional manner.