Book a Room, Help a Child
Ketchum’s Limelight Hotel Gives Back
PHOTO COURTESY LIMELIGHT HOTEL
PHOTO COURTESY SWIFTSURE
BY LEX NELSON
In the summer of 2021, a dozen kids from Wood River Middle School and Wood River High School arrived at Swiftsure Ranch Therapeutic Equestrian Center in Bellevue for an equine-facilitated learning session. These weren’t typical students on a field trip. The kids were part of The Bluebirds, an adolescent mental health and suicidal support group sponsored by The National Alliance on Mental Illness - Wood River Valley (NAMI-WRV ). Students who join The Bluebirds are locked in battles with mental illness, and 28
working with horses at Swiftsure helps them fight it. The time spent with gentle animals is a vehicle for social-emotional learning. As Swiftsure Executive Director Paul Bennett puts it, “The environment promotes healthy social interaction, respect, and team-based problem-solving.” The therapy session at Swiftsure last summer was one of several made possible by an unusual donor — the Limelight Ketchum Community Fund (LKCF). The fund was created in 2017 by the Limelight Hotel Ketchum, one of three hotels in the Limelight Hotels group. Every year, its grant cycle supports up
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to 13 organizations in the Wood River Valley focused on mental health, domestic abuse, and crisis care. In 2020, the Fund donated $5,280 to Swiftsure and $2,500 to NAMI. “[Those funds] went to direct costs like paying the instructors, the arena, the cost of the horses — all of that good stuff,” Bennett says. Dollars pour into the LKCF from a variety of sources. “The Fund is financed by contributions from the Limelight Hotel Ketchum’s operations, by employees through an optional paycheck deduction, and by
