| | River Valley Riders Review - Winter 2024/2025 In this issue: -
Message from Cheryl Holt, Executive Director -
Round-Up Gala Update and Videos -
2025 Program Update for Participants -
Our Special Herd of Horses -
2025 Volunteer Training |
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| | Message from Cheryl Holt, Executive Director |
| Hello All, Happy Anniversary River Valley Riders! I am amazed and humbled when I look back over the past 25 years! I am eternally grateful to ALL OF YOU who helped make these last 25 years so successful. We have come a long way and still have much more of our daunting dream to achieve. We will keep working toward our end goal of a completed facility, with horses living on site and lessons year-round. Right before we created River Valley Riders as a Minnesota non-profit organization, Joan Berg, Jenny Sargent, and I were volunteering with Courage St. Croix. We wanted to expand the program to another evening at the Washington County Fairgrounds, but they did not approve it. It was at that moment we decided to do it ourselves! It was a little scary, but exciting! Once we were established, we started thinking about getting our own land and facility. That seemed like such a HUGE dream—and it was—but Joan, who was our Executive Director at the time, kept that goal in front of us all the time. We started seriously looking for property in 2007 and purchased our current property in 2009. This was our first giant step to realizing our big and daunting dream! Then the real work began to develop the property for use. We have been very diligent about development and finances. We always fundraise, then build, to keep us out of debt. Speaking of that, a big accomplishment this year was our ability to pay off our land mortgage!!! River Valley Riders is truly debt free!! We are continuing to enjoy the luxury of our Phase 2 buildings, the warm inside accommodations with indoor bathrooms!! Our mission is to create a supportive community where people with special needs connect with horses and experience life-changing benefits. Here is a quote from a mother of one of our participants that demonstrates the importance of our mission: “Our daughter has been with RVR for 14 years. She absolutely loves the social aspect of RVR. When she first started, she was not able to walk. Just three months after she started RVR, she took her first steps. She is so proud of herself when she rides. We recently had an assessment with a specialist at the Mayo Clinic. The doctor said that she had the best gait on any child with Angelman syndrome that she has ever seen; I am sure that it is due to the many years of horseback riding!” |
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| | Our programming for 2024 was very busy. We conducted lessons for 26 weeks, Monday through Thursday, with several weeks of programming on Fridays as well. We served 150 participants, with the help from ~200 volunteers, 16 horses, and 8 certified instructors. Thank you to our many volunteers!!! We partnered with RVR instructor and physical therapist Sally DelGiudice to offer Hippotherapy this summer at the Afton site. We partnered with local schools again this year, serving about 60 students from two schools, Waldorf School and Liberty Ridge Elementary School. RVR was very fortunate this year to have three additional horses donated to us. Joining Arvid and Booker are Annie, Ice, and Winston. A special congratulations and thanks to Jon Cheney as he was awarded the 2024 PATH Intl. Region 6 Volunteer of the Year! Jon has served RVR for 8 years in many roles. Xcel Energy employees and the Boy Scouts from Troop 9249 of Stillwater helped RVR out this year with a couple of workdays. Much was accomplished which helped to maintain the facility. In closing, here are a couple quotes from our participant families: “RVR means so much to our son that he follows the RVR website every day, knows every horse, keeps track of events, talks about it endlessly, and hosts his own RVR program utilizing imaginative play with his stuffed animals—complete with the white board of horses and riders and inventive accommodations to help his riders. I can't think of any other program with that much impact in all aspects of a participant's life!” “My daughter used to be so challenged in her daily activities and behaviors. She was constantly anxious, unable to even go to school some days despite our efforts and seeking many other therapy types. Therapeutic riding has strengthened her sense of esteem, confidence, control over what she can control and ability to ‘go with the flow’ when it’s necessary. We honestly can’t imagine what she’d be like without this. It was so stressful before; now she is so much more the beautiful soul that we always have known. The difference between having therapeutic riding and not is incredibly profound. I wish it could be year-round!! She very much feels part of the community. Her whole world is so much brighter. Thank you!” Sending all of you best wishes for health, happiness and love this Holiday Season! Blessings to you for the New Year! Warm regards,
Cheryl |
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| | Round-Up Gala and Auction Update |
| The 25th Anniversary Round-Up Gala was a night to remember! One-hundred and eighty friends of RVR sold out the event and gathered at the DoubleTree by Hilton Saint Paul East on Saturday, November 23, 2024. The evening’s incredible energy started with live music by TomTyme. Our host, Lori Crever added fun and laughter. Our riders' stories were shared by the beautiful video by Dan Chinander of Twin Cities Creative Media Group created for our 25th Anniversary. He also produced Majestic Strength: the Transformative Power of the Horse in honor of our equine partners. And we enjoyed an encore performance of Feeling Free by Tracey Blake. We thank them for their creative talents! We are also grateful to our sponsors Stagetime Productions, ClickBid, AV For You and Protege Power as well as our corporate partners First State Bank and Trust, Crabtree’s Garden Gate, and RAM Buildings! Click to watch these inspiring videos! |
| | Generous donors gave $92,831 and overwhelmingly surpassed our goal of $65,000 for Fund Our Mission! This will go toward supporting RVR’s program expenses and directly benefit our riders and horses. We are so grateful to everyone who helped make the Round-Up so successful - whether you donated amazing auction items, attended the event, bid on incredible auction items, volunteered your time, or shared your financial gift. Your generosity has helped us make a real difference in the lives of those we serve. From the entire RVR team, THANK YOU for being an integral part of our mission! Please save the date for next year’s Round-Up Gala on Saturday, November 22, 2025! |
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| | 2025 Program Update for Participants |
| We are looking forward to a wonderful 2025 program season. The program is planned to begin on April 14th and continue through October 30th, with 26 weeks of riding. We will again divide the program into 3 sessions. Spring (8 weeks); Summer (10 weeks); Fall (8 weeks), with the weeks of Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day off. Our lesson fees for 2025 are as follows, billed by the number of weeks in each session: Group Riding lessons will be $65.00 per 45-minute lesson; Private/Semi-Private Riding lessons will be $90.00 per 60-minute lesson and Carriage Driving lessons will be $75.00 per 45-minute lesson. We will open registration in late-December for those who were in the program in 2024. This will be sent by email to eligible participants/families. They will have until January 31, 2025 to get the registration form and nonrefundable $75 registration fee per participant mailed to RVR. The liability form, Spring Session payment and medical form are due by April 1, 2025. If there are any spots remaining, they will be filled from our existing wait list. Reminder that River Valley Riders does not provide individual helmets for riding or driving. We have a pool of helmets that are shared by participants. Participants will not have a specific helmet assigned to them. If this is not acceptable to you, please purchase a personal helmet to use for the program. Helmets are required for all riders and drivers. All helmets are required to be ASTM-SEI approved and no more than 5 years old. NO BIKE HELMETS. Starting in 2025, we are implementing a formal weight policy for the safety of our riders, volunteers and horses. This may limit some riders from mounted services, but we do offer carriage driving as an alternative. Riders’ weights should be official weights from the physician, fully clothed, with shoes. If this is not possible, then please weigh them with a reliable scale, fully clothed, with shoes. RVR may require on-site weigh-ins, if it is deemed necessary. The detailed policy will be available by the end of 2024. |
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| | | By Stacy McDonald, Development Director You may have heard that our herd has grown significantly this past year. After Tanner retired in 2023, we went from owning one horse, Arvid, to (seemingly) suddenly owning five! Winston and Annie are two horses that have been involved with RVR for several years. Now that they have been donated to RVR, their status has been changed from “volunteer” to “staff.” Booker came to us in the fall of 2023 after a friend of RVR met him and suggested he would be a good fit. Booker had the carriage driving experience as well as the demeanor to work with our riders. Once we met him, we knew that we couldn’t pass him up. Then this summer, we were notified of another horse whose family was looking to place him with RVR. Ice had demonstrated his excellent training and gentle personality when he was a therapy horse at our May Township site in 2021 so we accepted him gratefully. He immediately settled into his new routine and became best friends with Winston. |
|  | Since we do not yet have a stable built on our property, we are thankful for the generosity of our supporters who share their homes and love with our treasured horses: Arvid – cared for by Larry and Anne in Afton
Winston – cared for by Silke and Ilja in Denmark Township
Annie – cared for by Randy and Lynn in Woodbury
Booker – boarded (also with great care!) at a facility in Hugo
Ice – cared for by Melissa in Inver Grove Heights In addition to year-round programming, another benefit of completing the final phase of construction will be the opportunity to increase our herd. Although this is planned for several years in the future, who are we to deny fate? We are so lucky to have Ice, Booker, Annie, Winston, and Arvid, and we are even more fortunate to have volunteers and supporters who enable us to keep and sustain our growing herd. Our Horse Sponsorship program gives donors the opportunity to choose the horse they support and receive a photo! P.S. Tanner is doing great at his retirement home provided by This Old Horse. We are grateful! |
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| | Saying Goodbye to Seven Special Horses It is with heavy hearts that we share the sad news that seven of RVR's wonderful therapy horses passed away in 2024. Some had transitioned to retirement, but they all had touched the lives of many of our riders. We will miss them dearly and are grateful for the time we had together. |
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| | Planned for April 5, 2025 New Volunteers: The morning Zoom meeting and afternoon hands-on training are mandatory. Volunteers who started in 2024 and did not attend April 2024 training day: The afternoon hands-on training is mandatory. Returning Volunteers: You are welcome to the afternoon hands-on training as a refresher or to be evaluated as a horse leader. Our season-starting training day on April 5, 2025 will be a great introduction to the fun and responsibility of RVR volunteering. For brand new volunteers the day will begin in your home with a Zoom session from 9:00am to 10:30am. We will be reviewing the 2025 Volunteer Handbook and sharing information about the most common diagnoses/disabilities of our participants and how to best support them to achieve their goals. The afternoon in-person training will start at 1:00pm at our Afton lesson site (2007 Neal Avenue South) for hands-on experience with our horses, ending at 4:30pm. The afternoon in-person training is mandatory for new volunteers and those returning who started volunteering with RVR May-October 2024. Lessons are planned to start at our Afton lesson site the week of April 14th. Please put these dates on your calendar now! Hope to see you in the Spring! |
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| | | | | | River Valley Riders (EIN# 41-1949447) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with support from individuals, foundations and corporations. Your financial donation directly benefits the children and families served by River Valley Riders. All donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Financial statements will be provided upon request. |
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