The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • January through April 2022 • Page 88
CW Kids in the Community Winter 2022
Kids Volunteering Opportunities To Give Back To The Community By Laura K. Cowan Kids are back to school, but the community is still struggling. Many activities are up in the air even now. One of the ways we can create meaning out of the suffering around us is to volunteer to help others. We all know people or know of people who still have jobs but struggle to afford enough food or utilities. The environment continues to need our help. There are many ways that volunteering can help us help others, which can also support our own mental or physical health.
Paula said the best volunteers to help with this program should be a minimum of 14-years old, because they need to help with side-walking the horses or leading horses with riders on them, and they need to be physically capable of helping with an emergency dismount if that’s ever necessary. The job is to assist the rider in completing tasks, and volunteers need to be able to walk in an arena for 30-40 minutes.
One of the ways we can create meaning out of the suffering around us is to volunteer to help others. Volunteering can provide healthy activity for kids whose routines have been disrupted, while also soothing the agitation of feeling helpless to do anything for others during such complicated times. There is a lot of need out there, as well as opportunities for volunteering that will fit pretty much anyone. Kids’ volunteer activities here include indoor and outdoor options, from helping the homeless to working with animals. In some cases, you don’t even have to be in-person to be a volunteer. If you’ve got a service-minded kidlet, here are some ways you can support them in helping others, sometimes without even leaving the safety of home.
Therapeutic Riding Volunteer The program hasn’t tried youth fundraising, but they are open to the possibility. If you have a younger child that wants to volunteer, you can contact Therapeutic Riding to coordinate a remote fundraising drive. Therapeutic Riding has a backlog of volunteers because Covid-19 has limited their ability to host orientations that are needed for new volunteers, but the team would still love new signups. It’s not drop-in, however, and requires a commitment of six sessions of six weeks for each participant. The program runs year-round now in an indoor heated arena. “Our current facility is gorgeous,” Paula told me. “We used to be on Joy Road and all our horses were rented. Now all our horses are owned. We have about 15 equine partners.” For more information about Therapeutic Riding Inc., visit therapeuticridinginc.org.
Help Clean Up The Environment
Therapeutic Riding Inc. is a program that helps individuals with disabilities learn to ride horses in order to help them in some way. “It’s not equine-facilitated therapy like some other programs,” volunteer Program Coordinator Paula Evers told me. “Therapeutic Riding gives adaptive horsemanship riding lessons to impaired individuals. That can include cognitive or physical disabilities,” she said. “Participants are received on a case-by-case basis from four-years [old and] up. People receiving the lessons have to be under 185 pounds, because our horses are aging out and that’s the limit they can carry.”
Therapeutic Riding gives adaptive horsemanship riding lessons to impaired individuals. That can include cognitive or physical disabilities. —volunteer Program Coordinator Paula Evers The goals? Increase core strength, balance, and cognitive steering to maneuver a horse to the indoor arena. The program helps a wide variety of people but won’t work for any individual with uncontrolled seizures or other disabilities that might cause injury during riding.
