STAYING IN SADDLE
Therapeutic riding center needs funds to keep the horses healthy
Ivy Hill Therapeutic Equestrian Center is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, but that doesn’t change the $5,000 to $6,000 needed each month to take care of the dozen horses.
“That’s just to keep our herd of horses healthy and fed and moving along. Those expenses are coming whether or not our doors are open,” said Toni Leidy, a member of the Ivy Hill board and parent of a 19-year-old who has been an Ivy Hill rider since she was six.
Fundraising is always important to help offset the costs of the services and give financial aid to help cover those costs, but it is even more necessary now, said Leidy, who chairs Ivy Hill’s Development Committee.
“Our regular fundraising events are important because we are responsible for raising the funds to allow our riders to participate in these activities,” she said in a telephone interview. “Equine therapy, and therapies in general for the special needs community, are very expensive.”
On June 20, Ivy Hill will be holding “Miles for #WHYiIVY,” a fundraising event in which participants are invited to take part in a walk, run or ride around their own “neigh”borhood.
“Although we are staying physically distant, we are inviting the community to come together for a cause that provides lifechanging therapies for our special needs community,” Ivy Hill Executive Director Laura Brockett-Strausser said in a release. “I have spoken with parents that have expressed the immense detriment that they have seen physically and emotionally in their child since their therapy has been postponed. We need the community’s support to ensure that we can continue to fulfill our important mission for years to come once it is safe to do so.”
Participants can take
part in the event as individuals or members of a team, Leidy said.
“I think that it’s really important for people to realize that while we’ve all been hit hard, the special needs community of children and adults have been hit really hard,” she said. “They’re not getting their therapy. They’re not getting to see their friends.”
Along with the physical aspects of the therapy, there is also the social part, she said.
“That’s a lot of what Ivy Hill provides to our families in addition to the benefits of getting on a horse,” Leidy said. “This community in general has really suffered because we’re taking away everything that they know, that they need to have during the day, every day, multiple times a week.”
Miles for #WHYiIVY follows on the heels of the #WHYiIVY social media campaign in which people wrote about what made them keep coming to Ivy Hill and posted it with the hashtag #WHYiIVY, Leidy said.
Story times are being held by Ivy Hill each Saturday on Facebook Live, she said. Along with a story being read, there are therapy horses present.
“That’s really been great for our riders to log on and see the horses,” she said. “They miss that connection. So do our volunteers.”
Registration for Miles for #WHYiIVY is available on the www.ivyhillequestrian.org website.
The goal for the event was initially set at raising a modest $6,000, which has been surpassed, Leidy said. As of May 26, the website showed $8,295 had been raised. The hope now is to raise enough money from Miles for #WHYiIVY to pay for a couple months of horse care, Leidy said.
Ivy Hill is committed to getting back to the work being done there, but it’s not yet known when it will reopen, she said.
“We have to be very cautious, not only because of what we can do, but because we work with a typically very fragile population, so their health is obviously our utmost concern,” she said.
A $4,500 grant from the Foundations Community Partnership’s COVID-19 Response Grant program will help pay for returning riders who need assistance because of the pandemic, Ivy Hill said in a release.
“This grant will be going towards supporting riders who want to return to their needed equine assisted therapy, but due to COVID-19, may have a new financial hardship,” the release said.
“That’s gonna go right into rider support,” Leidy said.