 |
| Horse and Rider Connection is a nonprofit organization that offers equine therapy for teens and young adults. The group had been renting space in Raymond, but is now launching a capital campaign to work toward building a permanent home of its own in the Greater Portland area. COURTESY OF HORSE AND RIDER CONNECTION. |
By
Elizabeth Richards
Horse and Rider
Connection, a nonprofit organization offering equine therapy to teens and young
adults, has moved a few times since its inception a decade ago and its last two
locations have been rented sites in Raymond. Now, it is entering a new phase and
launching a capital campaign to work toward building a permanent home of its
own.
Executive Director Debbie
Little said that HARC is still an active nonprofit organization, but they are
in a transition phase.
The capital campaign will
focus on raising funds to purchase land and build a permanent facility of their
own in the Greater Portland Area.
“We want to be able to
help more people, and in order to do that we need to be closer to the Greater
Portland area,” Salamone said.
She said that they’ve been
focused primarily on the Westbrook area, since there is still farmland, and
public transportation is available.
Little said they’re
looking for something along a bus route, so that when participants have a bad
day and just need to get to the barn, they can do so.
“We’ve seen significant
growth in kids, adults and veterans just by letting them come in and hang,”
Little said. Before the pandemic, for
instance, she worked with young adults in the MainStay program on a weekly basis.
MainStay is a program of The
Opportunity Alliance that provides residential treatment for young adults ages 18
to 25 experiencing significant mental health symptoms. Working with MainStay
helped keep young adults in the program since they looked forward to being with
the horses each week, Little said.
Little is currently
working out of Fernwood Cove, a camp for girls in Harrison, under the Natural
Horsemanship Center umbrella. Her work isn’t just about riding, she said.
“It’s about relationship
with the horse, and understanding the horse, and being able to read the horse
and understand what they’re asking as well, so the kids learn life skills
through it,” Little said.
Meanwhile, HARC is working
toward their long-term goal while still offering scholarship money to teens who
could benefit from a relationship with horses to attend equine programs that
the organization works closely with, including Little’s programs.
Little said she wants the
community to understand that the organization is not going anywhere.
“I want the community to
know that we’ve had great success with kids, and we want to keep going there,
so we’re at a transition period,” she said. I don’t want people to think we’ve
disappeared.”
Having a facility of their
own would allow HARC to expand and operate the way they want.
“Unless you have your own
place it’s really hard to run a program the way you really want to do it,”
Salamone said.
Ideally, she said, they’d
love to have someone gift the organization some land and build not only the
barn, but a place for a stable manager and, at some point, space for recovery
meetings and therapy sessions to allow participants to process what they
learned through working with horses.
“It is a huge undertaking
– it’s not going to happen in a year,” Salamone said. “It’s probably going to
be at least a five-year plan.”
Salamone knows first-hand
how valuable the program is, since her daughter participated in the Maine
Mustang Project.
“I know it works. I’ve seen it. It’s magical,” she said.
“People don’t know just how much they can get from a horse.”
HARC will kick off the
capital campaign by offering a clinic with author Tim Hayes who wrote the book Riding
Home: The Power of Horses to Heal. This is not a riding clinic or a horse
show suitable for young children, but a clinic focusing on body language,
emotions, attitudes, breakthroughs, and both equine and human coping skills.
HARC is excited to offer
this clinic because “what he talks about is what we do,” Salamone said. “We’re
hoping to draw mental health professionals, social service people,
teachers…anybody who works in a healing industry.”
The clinic will take place
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 29 at Ashland Farm in Falmouth. CEUs for PATH
professionals are available for both participating and auditing.
The cost for the clinic is
$250 to participate and $25 to audit.
Visit the news and events
page at https://www.horseandriderconnection.org/ for more information and
to register. <
