Project stride

Project Stride is a program of Starfish Equine Rescue to provide individual and group equine therapy sessions for first responders, veterans, essential employees, adolescents with emotional disabilities, children and adult with developmental disabilities and their families utilizing rescue horses.

With our main focus on mental health awareness and social emotional learning, our rehabilitated horses have become the perfect partners in modeling healing and second chances. The project opened in  August of 2020 as a pro Bono program. In the midst of the largest global pandemic of our lifetimes, Starfish volunteers noticed a need in the community for a socially distant safe haven for children and adults struggling with the emotional distress due to COVID-19.

With both a love for horses and helping others friends, Kimberly Fenton and Abby Revoir set out to build a program that combined their passions. With Abby’s vast success in equine rehabilitation and Kimberly's experience as a licensed Board Certified Behavioral Analyst (BCBA), Project Stride was built as an equine assisted learning program led by Fenton, who also serves as  a Board member and volunteer. Project Stride focuses on self awareness, coping skills, choice making skills and self- regulation. Guided by the idea of empowerment, the mission of the Stride Project is about helping others to help themselves through observation, connection and teachable moments created in our equine assisted therapy sessions.

But why rescued horses? When you step onto our farm you’ll see horses of all different shapes, sizes and colors. Each inquisitive, kind, nurturing and loving. Each with their own past, their own story... These horses welcome us to take pieces of their stories and add them to our own. They draw a line from hardship to healing, and invite us to learn about ourselves. Each horse here harbors a fraction of pain that they have experienced, and that they have overcome. A fraction of pain or obstacle that we ourselves may have known, felt, or currently live with.

The Stride Project is about building a community with community in mind. This project is currently fueled by donations and 100% by volunteers. Making Strides Towards a Better Everyday.