TVF has awarded a grant of £3,500 to Barnfield Riding for the Disabled Association

Published: 01 May 2024

The Victoria Foundation is delighted to award a grant to fund two saddles and one set of poles to Barnfield Riding for the Disabled Association which will help improve the challenging lives of children in our community with disabilities.

We would like to say a huge Thank You to the Victoria Foundation for the recent donation of £3,500.  This money will be used to buy 2 saddles for our Riding for the Disabled ponies and a new set of poles to be used for the children’s sessions.

We are a very small charity who support children with physical and mental disabilities through our horse-riding therapy sessions. Based at Barnfield Riding School in Kingston we offer individual and group sessions run by trained volunteers to improve the challenging lives of children in our community with disabilities.

This donation will make a huge difference to the 25 children we are currently supporting.  The saddles we are currently using for the ponies are 30 plus years old, the leather is wearing thin, and we need to replace them, so it is more comfortable for both the children and the ponies.  Most of the children we support are very sensitive to how things like equipment, clothing etc make them feel. 

Our current poles are worn, falling apart, and broken (some completely in half).  The paint has also worn off (we have been re-painting them every year, so they are visible).  As children with physical and mental disabilities they need to be safe, comfortable and be able to see what they are doing.  The poles are a key part to their sessions, we use them to map the arena, practise counting as the horse steps over them, arrange them as a parking bay (so they learn how to instruct the ponies to stop and start) and in some instances we are thrilled to mention that they are used for dressage sessions with the children who have progressed to this type of riding.

On behalf of everyone at Barnfield Riding for the Disabled – our trustee’s, our volunteers, our children and our ponies – a huge THANK YOU.  And we would love to invite you to visit the stables to see the sessions in action.

Katy Mepham, Barnfield Riding for the Disabled Association