Program areas at Horses for Heroes - New Mexico
Hands-on programs include cowboy up!, a program that provides horsemanship, wellness and skill-set restructuring to post 9/11 combat wounded and ptsd-rated veterans, aiding in their post traumatic healing resilience. The program is self-paced and objective/outcome-based. It is both a day program for regional veterans and a residential program for participating veterans from out-of-state and across the country. The program is self-sustaining with program graduates serving as a cadre with the all volunteer instructor staff. Approximately 9,600 hours of sessions and veteran activities, including phone, skype, and zoom counseling, were provided.wisdom way for warriors is our hybrid life-skills coaching program, originally exclusive to women veterans, now integrated with our cowboy up! Program as well as individual coaching sessions. Veteran participant families and couples personal retreats - veterans who have participated in the cowboy up! Program are allowed to participate in a personal family or couples retreat, individually designed for their families' pre- and post-development needs.
Us special operations command (socom) warrior care coalition partnership - the us navy special warfare teams began pre-deployment resiliency training during 2023 as a result of the success of our pilot program, initiated in 2022, of pre-deployment resiliency for active military conducted with the us army first division. Providing trauma mitigation tools that allow active duty members who are deploying to combat zones the ability to identify the debilitating effects of combat trauma in themselves and their unit members in order to stave off what would become post traumatic stress disorder. As part of this initiative we will also host active duty couples returning from multiple deployments, in retreat style setting to mitigate and repair the catastrophic effects resulting from back to back combat deployments. As with all of our resident programs wholesome and nutritious homecooked meals are provided daily to all program participants for all programs. A continuing program is the 'train the trainers' grad core class for egcm (equine gestalt coaching method) on how to work with veterans and their trauma. The organization is endorsed by the New Mexico department of veterans services, New Mexico cattle growers association and their member ranches, working ranch cowboys association (wrca), wrangler national patriot program, american gold star mothers of america - albuquerque chapter; the military order of world wars - santa fe chapter; New Mexico women's veterans association, the southwest native american veterans association, and many more.
Navajo nation sustainable agriculture program for native american veteran ranchers. This program is conducted cooperatively with villanova universitys humanitarian engineering and international development division. We partner with graduate engineering student volunteers to address specific engineering challenges mainly dealing with water on our sister ranch on the navajo nation such as water restoration, reclamation and capture in support of their cow-calf production operation as well as the agriculture elements that are essential with growing hay for feed. Military veterans are fully engaged with the university students in designing, planning and executing the projects which encompass the entire academic year. Horses for Heroes cadre will similarly travel to villanova university to conduct program leader and team selection, oversight, training as well as project design and planning.