INDEPENDENCE, MO. ? Crystal Collins and Taylor Jackson find their dwarf hamster, Sabra E. Ham Ham, very easy to handle even though she is blind.

“We love animals. We like taking care of them,” Taylor said. “Just because she’s blind, doesn’t make it any more difficult to take care of her. We just let her crawl around and get some exercise. She loves to crawl around.”

The two sixth-graders are part of an after-school program at the Pioneer Ridge Sixth Grade Center in Independence called the Itty-Bitty Pet Adoption Agency.

The agency started last year at the James Bridger Eighth Grade Center through the gifted program. The community-solving project and its “Teacher’s Pet” program continues to link teachers in the district with small, homeless animals such as gerbils and hamsters.

Science center director Scott McQuerry continued the program this year as part of the school’s after-school activities. He said the purpose of the program is to rescue abandoned animals and re-socialize them in order to use and adopt them out as classroom pets.

This semester, all the animals were donated by Petco.

“They (Petco) are extremely generous in serving this program,” McQuerry said. “Teachers were very happy with how this program worked last year, so we decided to take it on here.”

The program received a grant from the Kauffman Foundation in order to provide cages, a wheel, chew toys and bedding for a year to teachers who adopted one of the animals. Two students are paired up to each animal and have been with them since the beginning of the year.

The animals will be delivered to their new homes soon. Most are going to elementary schools, but a couple are being sent to special education classrooms, gifted education centers and adult learning programs.

Nikki Dover, a sixth-grader, said she enjoyed working with the animals in the agency, especially her hamster, Sam. Nikki said every day she and the other students came in to clean the cages, feed the animals, play with them and make sure they are doing O.K. The only problem she runs into is when the hamsters try to jump out of the cages.

“They like to climb out of their boxes when you are cleaning the cages,” she said. “I’m kind of sad that he is leaving because I have worked with him since he was a baby, but he’ll have a nice time at his new home.”

McQuerry said many of the animals came to Petco because they had been returned or sent there after being left when someone moved. He said he was hoping to bring all the animals back in April for a “reunion” in conjunction with the science center’s petting zoo program.

Pioneer Ridge student Sara Mart enjoys her teddy bear hamster, Cuddles, and joined the after-school program because she has always liked animals.

“I used to have a dog and wanted to get back involved with animals again,” she said. “I like to hold the hamsters and just sit there with them. It’s a lot of fun.”

McQuerry said although the program had been successful, the future of it was uncertain.

“There is no funding for the program beyond this semester,” he said. “I think it teaches the students how to be patient and work carefully and gently with these animals. We’ll just have to see what happens.”