Horse Therapy Association
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Mission Statement
In Bulgaria, children with special needs are still a marginal group. Often these children live in social isolation and do not have access to kindergartens, schools and different forms of integration and developmental activities to meet their abilities and needs. The Horse Therapy Association mission is to help the children live more happy and healthy lives in a better integrated environment. We are doing this mainly by applying a high effective equine facilitated therapy to face their individual developmental needs.
About This Cause
The Horse Therapy Association (HTA) is a non-governmental organization operating for a public benefit, registered on 15 Jan 2015. The main goal of the Association is to introduce, apply and promote unknown to Bulgaria, modern and innovative therapy for people with disabilities: Equine Facilitated Therapy (EFT). The mission of the Horse Therapy Association is to help children with disabilities and their families to live happy and fulfilling lives. We achieve this through this extremely effective method of therapy, called Equine Facilitated Therapy. The “Smile and Progress Mission” is in action when children are surrounded by nature, horses and a team of specialists motivated to work for their better health! Every year HTA is working with approximately 70 children with different disorders: - autistic spectrum disorder - Down syndrome - cerebral palsy - epilepsy - different kind of genetic disorders - ADHD - psycho-emotional, cognitive, behaviour, social problems All the children are included in a long-term therapy programs aiming to better their functioning by using an effective therapy with a qualified specialist and a horse. Our team consist of two specialists with an international certificates to work with the equine facilitated method, which make them unique for Bulgaria. We have also 5 specially trained horses to meet the therapy needs for each child. We are also constructing at the moment our equine facilitated Center, where we are trying to provide the most efficient therapy conditions. The therapy itself is proved to be really beneficial in bettering the child development in many and different ways. In the emotional contact with the horses the children build a totally new relationship full of trust and unconditional love. The horse is big and strong animal, learning how to take care of them and how to ride them is giving the children a better self-esteem. They learn new skills, new form of communication and become more confident in their power to overcome any other situation in their lives. They improve also their concentration, focus of attention, (self)aggressive behaviour, social skills and motor abilities. For those children that are facing different kind of motor dysfunctions is really a great opportunity for development. Riding a horse in a well chosen therapy position under the guidance of a skilled EFT physiotherapists, gives them better balance, muscle strength, good upright posture, release the spasticity and improves fine and gross motor skills. And all this is happening with a lot of smiles and positive emotions in a beautiful place in the mountain where the clean air and Nature is part of their healing process. The therapy effect in our programs is usually around 60% bettering of the overall development and/or between 70-80% bettering at some level of functioning and only 10-15% without any change in functioning which sometimes is because we need more time and more therapy to be done. We also write an entrance expert assessment at the beginning and expert conclusion and recommendations at the end which also serve to report the progress of the child. We have children that made their first steps at our place and said their first words here. Step by step we are creating miracles that make the children more happy and independent, give hope to their parents and a lot of motivation for us to continue....even though sometimes it is so mission impossible. In Bulgaria we don't have a social programs that can financially support activities like ours. And the therapy is so expensive that the parents can't afford it. So we are constantly facing the need to find a financial support to be able to continue our mission. Taking care of 5 horses, building a Center, having a specialist to work there, developing the equine facilitated field in Bulgaria (not only at our place but spreading the knowledge and finding followers), we couldn't be able to do without of the help of so many people around us. During the years there are organizations, foundations, banks, private donors and a lot of volunteers that are walking with us the difficult path of being pioneer. We are so grateful for their help and trying to do our best to justify their trust. Applying the therapies is our main activity but we also have other important task to do: to develop the filed of EFT in Bulgaria and to develop ourself as professionals. We have activities at other cities in Bulgaria, not only in Sofia, where we are situated. 2021 In Varna we started a very effective partnership and there will be the second place in Bulgaria where the children would be able to receive an effective EFT from a qualified professional. We have put also some starting points of partnership in other 3 cities in the country. Also every year we are trying to provide to our specialist the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills. We are going to an international conferences, workshops, specializations, practices and we are having a very effective partnership with Czech Republic. Czech Republic has more then 30 years of experience in the filed of equine facilitated therapies, they have well developed and established educational system and a lot of good specialist form which we are trying to learn. From 2018 to 2021 we had an Erasmus + project with Czech Republic and Turkey where the main goal was to create a national education system and start train professionals locally. It was a great experience for our team, we learnt a lot and once we are ready with our local educational courses the field will grow dramatically, so hope this could be done in a couple of years. Growing the field, means more specialist to help more children in need and bigger chance the state to hear about the benefits of the method and bigger chance to start some financial programs for such kind of therapies. This is our vision (and hope) of how the development of equine facilitated therapies in Bulgaria should be done, that's why we are constantly trying to maintain the following activities: 1. Provide a highly professional equine facilitated therapy for children with special needs; 2. Professional development of our team (educational courses, conferences, mentorship, supervisions) 3. Building a Center which meets the European standards for professional EFT 4. Spreading the idea and knowledge about the method among the populations and the specialists. 5. Developing a local educational systems for EFT specialists. We have a lot of work to do and as much power to do it! But we also need as mush support!