Horsing Around (and Painting, too!) at Brook Hill Farm

As a young, vibrant Rotary Club, we are always excited to learn about and partner with great service organizations. Recently, seven Dupont Rotarians traveled to Forest, VA to work with Brook Hill Farm, a horse rescue and therapeutic riding center. Brook Hill Farm is a growing non-profit that benefits from a lot of volunteer help, including the Forest, VA Rotary Club.

Brook Hill Farm rescues horses and then uses these rescued horses in traditional therapeutic riding programs and an innovative “youth succeed in school” program to help youth work through emotional issues, build self-esteem, and maintain good grades in school.

Volunteers can offer many services, such as working directly with the horses, doing maintenance around the farm, performing administrative tasks in the office, tutoring youth, and filling a role in the therapeutic riding program.

As volunteers from Dupont Rotary, we spent our time painting fences. It might seem like a small thing, but there were yards and yards of fences that needed to be painted. Painting was a perfect service project because it allowed our members to chat and get to know each other better and achieve a great finished product of 90 yards of painted fence in only a few hours.

Post service project, a few of us decided to camp overnight at a local KOA on the way back to D.C. We proved our wilderness skills by building a fire and cooking our dinner over the fire. Best of all was watching wilderness TV and chatting the night away.

For more information on Brook Hill Farm, check out www.brookhillfarm.org.