For facilitators & program directors
We see how much you're carrying.
You're running sessions. You're managing intake. You're fielding calls from parents and referral sources. And somewhere in there, you're also supposed to be building a curriculum that's evidence-grounded enough to satisfy a funder, a clinical partner, or your own conscience about whether this is actually working.
That's too much to ask of one person. It always has been.
This industry is a fragmented cottage industry with high mission alignment and low operational maturity. Most providers are solopreneurs or micro-nonprofits carrying the sessions, the horses, the facility, the billing, the marketing, and the grant writing entirely alone, with no infrastructure catching them. It produces a burnout trap, a revenue ceiling, and, the one RISE exists to solve, a credibility gap.
We know you didn't get into this work to become a curriculum designer.
RISE is a research-grounded, outcome-measured equine-assisted learning curriculum, built to license, rather than build from scratch. Four age tracks. Facilitator training. A credibility asset you can hand your own funders.
Not a workshop. A curriculum.
What's inside every module
Complete week-by-week session plans across an 8-week arc
Validated outcome instruments: GAD-7, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, ERQ, and our proprietary Strengths Identification Tool
T0 baseline protocol before week one
A live Zoom training with Susan and Dr. Emma Barnosky
Optional ongoing consulting support — available if and when you want it, never required
Four age tracks: SPARK (8–11) · IGNITE (12–15) · EMPOWER (16–18) · GROUND (18–23)
The horse is not a mirror. Every RISE session is built on the principle that the horse is an active participant, making its own choices, responding to its own read of the moment. The horse is not a passive surface reflecting the participant back at themselves.
Why This Matters to Your Funders
RISE is a modularized, research-grounded equine-assisted learning curriculum — Polyvagal Theory, ACEs research, Self-Determination Theory, VIA Character Strengths, and Purpose Science — with outcome measurement built directly in.
RISE is what you bring to your funders
Funders and donors aren't comparing your program to nothing — they're comparing it to every other program asking for the same dollars. A grant reviewer is going to fund the one that can show a real before-and-after. A donor wants to know their gift produced something measurable. A school or clinician deciding who to refer families to needs to be able to defend that choice to their own leadership.
A licensed, evidence-grounded curriculum is what makes all three of those conversations easier — the grant application, the donor report, the referral relationship. That's the part of RISE that pays for itself over time, not just the sessions themselves.
RISE is being piloted right now at Reins of HOPE, currently running across two of their programs. You're not licensing a promise — you're licensing something that's already running in the field.
