About the Nonprofit
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Horse Power For Life is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping cancer patients and survivors of ALL ages participate in a memorable horse experience, where they can reduce stress, escape and see a world beyond the disease with the ones they love the most FREE of charge!
The key initiative of Horse Power for Life is to provide free evidenced based professional horsemanship instruction for cancer patients and survivors of all ages, who have been affected by any cancer. This includes cancer patients, their families, survivors, and those who have lost a significant other to this terrible disease. In addition, we invite and encourage family members to participate in the program.
HPFL serves an average of 200 individuals per year. The core of the program includes 90-minute sessions and guides families through all aspects of horse care from basic grooming to leading horses to riding. Our program is customized for everyone based on their age, skills, experience, comfort level, health, and physical ability. Each family can come for a total of 12 free sessions. Students are encouraged to become Ambassadors to the program at the completion of the course, offering their newly acquired knowledge to new families entering the program.
In addition to our normal free therapeutic sessions, HPFL offers four (one week) Summer Pony Camps to local children affected by cancer. Along with children with a current cancer diagnosis, this includes those who may have a parent or sibling with cancer, or those who have lost a parent or sibling to this disease. This free program is for beginner and intermediate riders, children ages 6-16, includes horse related activities: grooming, care and riding, along with swimming with a lifeguard and creating pottery.
While the focus is to give these children a fun and positive experience, research has shown that, for people with cancer, physical activity, including riding horses, can decrease anxiety, stress, and depression, while improving levels of pain, fatigue and improve cancer survival rate. Furthermore, equine therapy experts have found that, horses are uniquely sensitive, providing a nonverbal vehicle for people to access their emotions, which can improve responsiveness to cancer treatment and extend survivorship.
