Spring Reins of Life is recruiting, restructuring, reinventing, revitalizing and rebooting as it sources new ways to secure donors and funding partners. It also is seeking to regain local strategic alliances, rebuilding its volunteer base and executive board.
In the midst of a national fundraiser for May, Mental Health Awareness Month, it is seeking to rebuild its veterans’ Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Programming.
Spring Reins of Life, based out of Hunt Cap Farm in Readington, Hunterdon County, has successfully funded, hosted and served more than 1,100 veterans since opening its founding in June 2012. New Jersey veterans were the first population served at SRoL, which is committed to keeping Operation Horse available. Although more than $200,000 was raised through private donors/public fundraisers until 2020, the pandemic wiped out the group’s base of support and traditional way of funding.
Now SRoL is involved with the Seen Through Horses Campaign 2023 and its sponsors Horses for Mental Health and Zoetis Equine. It highlights 55 organizations across the country; Spring Reins of Life is the only one in New Jersey.
Those who are interested in helping SRoL should contact the organization, which is a non-profit 501c3. It is an EAGALA (Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association) model program offering Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning. Here is a link to connect with SRoL.
It uses horses for therapeutic intervention in connection with promoting emotional growth and healing. A team approach features a licensed mental health professional, a certified equine specialist and horses specifically selected for their capacity to work with individuals who are troubled or suffering.
The program does not, however, offer any riding or mounted activities. The EAGALA Model offers the emotional benefits of behavioral rehearsal combined with a rich experiential component, which naturally develops when observing clients interacting with the horses at “free will” or on equal ground.
Animal-assisted therapy with horses combines the positive emotional effects gained from the human/horse bond with opportunities to challenge and explore a person’s thoughts and internal struggles during activities with an equine partner. It is a therapeutic intervention that defeats the stigma often associated with traditional counseling, but more importantly, it is an intervention that works.
The organization would like to recruit New Jersey residents as volunteers. However, so much also can be done remotely.
“SRoL will welcome enthusiastic, passionate, revitalizing support from anywhere we can accept. We are looking for interested volunteers to join our herd and build our base back to where it was before March 2020. This includes becoming involved in starting over with new committees for fundraising, veterans’ advocacy, teens and youth advocacy and donor outreach. Additional executive board members also are needed.
“We are connected to and involved in the Seen Through Horses Campaign because we have seen the miracles that can happen when groups of internally wounded humans have the chance to find their place among the herd. Finding the trust within the horse and themselves, then leads to pathways of healing and personalized coping skills and self-leadership. Everyone has their own solutions to find, and each horse has shown the way uniquely to each situation. In the past decade we have witnessed the mending of families, rebuilding of marriages, personal life-shifts, and lives saved `because of that horse.’ ”
Operation Horse Wednesdays requires $35,000 in funding to host these sessions.