Every other week on NHPR, we highlight a local non-profit that’s providing a great service for the Granite State. On this week’s episode of Give Back New Hampshire, we focus on Freedom Reins Therapeutic Riding Center.
Founded in 2021, Freedom Reins is dedicated to using the power of horses, teams, and communities to improve the lives of all ages, means, and challenges through the experience of therapeutic riding and activities.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Denise LaRoche: My name is Denise LaRoche. I'm the executive director of Freedom Reigns Therapeutic Riding Center in Surry, New Hampshire. We provide therapeutic riding, horseback lessons to people with disabilities, whether it's physical or mental cognitive disabilities. We also collaborate with veterans associations as well as low income families in the Keene area.
We started this organization after the previous one that was in the area closed due to Covid. A lot of the therapeutic riding centers in southern Brattleboro, the Vermont area and in the Keene area closed due to funding, and then we had last year, where it just rained for months on end, and the cost of hay and the cost of feeding the animals skyrocketed. So we were able to sustain through all of that.
We are right now the only therapeutic riding center in the Monadnock region, so we are servicing all of those areas. So I'm the one here every morning that feeds them and usually every night, but we have four instructors for the program, and we have 25 incredible volunteers that help us out through the weeks.
Becki Marrero: My name is Becky Marrero. I am the program manager here, and I'm also an instructor. My role as the program manager is I schedule everybody. I take care of all the paperwork that comes in. I train all of the volunteers. I just kind of oversee the program in general.
As an instructor, I lead in lessons and make sure that we're giving our clients a good lesson based on their ability and making it so that they're progressing and they're becoming more independent for each of them.
Denise LaRoche: Probably our number one challenge with any nonprofit is funding. We are fairly new, and even though we do fundraising throughout and obviously the program brings in revenue, we're always looking for other streams of revenue to keep it going. So where we only run till October, our funds have to last us from the end of October to the beginning of April when we start up again.
Prime example is cost of hay. We are lucky enough that we do our own haying so I can keep the costs down, but cost of grain and all of the other things that these horses need continues to rise, so our need for funding obviously is up there.
Our second largest challenge is getting volunteers. So because we run mostly during the summer, everybody is on vacation or coming and going. We have a core group of about 15 that have been with us from the beginning, that we could not do this without them, and then we have another 9 or 10 that kind of flowed in and flowed out, which we appreciate all of that help.
So we're always looking for volunteers, and we're always willing to train whoever is willing to give us a hand.
Jamie Stetson: My name is Jamie Stetson. I work for New Hope, New Horizons, and I work with disabled adults, and we come up here once a week and do riding with an individual that we serve. He does really well with the horses. He's very gentle with the horses. Sometimes he can't always be gentle. So when he comes here, he's very good with the horses and it's very therapeutic for him to ride.
It really relaxes him. He can get kind of anxious sometimes. So we've noticed a big change in his just demeanor when he comes here. He's just very calm, relaxed and just loves it.
Becki Marrero: I love to see growth. I love to see accomplishments by our participants. I love the horses. Horse girl at heart, for always. You know, I just I love changing lives. That's what we're doing here. We're changing lives.
Denise LaRoche: It's truly a blessing to be able to do this. The people I've met, the participants I've met, the families. Knowing that you're making a difference, I think that's what keeps all of our instructors going.
When it's 90 degrees and you're out there melting and, you know, the participants are hot and sticky and the horses are hot and sticky, but then you'll have a breakthrough. You'll have a lesson where, you know, maybe that one participant couldn't sit up straight for the 10 paces and all of a sudden they can and you can see that you're helping them build their muscles, and you're also helping them build their confidence.
You know, the smile on the kids faces, the laughter seeing the families enjoy. You know, this is a break for a lot of the parents and caregivers. It's hard to be a caregiver, and they get to come and and sit while somebody else works with the client and they get to, you know, come out and sit. It's a nice area. It's quiet so everybody can do something while they're here. It's all of those little things that add up to keep us going.
And who doesn't love a horse, right?
