2022-2023 Financial Year
With the previous two years being impacted by Covid-19, bush fires and then floods we had been hoping for a more settled year and in many ways it was. A growing and committed team of amazing volunteers coupled with exceptional program results were absolute highlights. However, concerns for the future of the Sanctuary due to tenure instability at the current site overshadowed much of the year.
Volunteers
70 volunteers generously gave their precious time in support of the Sanctuary. Activities included: program support, horse care, gardening, fundraising, repairs and maintenance, house-keeping, social media, graphic design and volunteer co-ordination. 8399 volunteer hours were given.
Programs
42 clients received 692 hours of mental health support. On average, participants’ mental health increased by an incredible 71%.
The programs offered this year were:
- Recovery & Discovery equine therapy program for women
- Young Veterans equine therapy program
- Go Remarkable equine therapy program for girls
- Meditate & Create art therapy program
- Trauma-informed Stretch and Soothe program
- Pony Tales early intervention reading program
Projects
The Sanctuary was flooded twice in the early part of 2022 causing significant disruption to our program schedule and compromising safety for horses and humans alike. Grant funding was generously provided by Sunshine Coast Council and RACQ Foundation for flood reparation and mitigation works and our volunteer maintenance team installed game-changing rubber matting in the most affected areas.
Our inaugural Seeing The Soul Art Prize & Exhibition in support of Mental Health was more successful than we could have hoped for with 74 artworks by 42 artists entered, attendance of almost 2100, opening night attendance of 290, massive social media reach of 74,819 and widespread media publicity across print and radio. This event will now become an annual fixture.
Place
Our ongoing lease with Sunshine Coast Council was replaced with a month-by-month tenancy arrangement as council undertook a master planning process of the site we are on and the surrounding untenanted land.
During that process a local sporting club approached council with a request to share our site. Such an arrangement would be extremely disruptive to our schedule and would likely result in our capacity to run programs being reduced by over 75%.
We are still in discussions with council to find a solution that does not have any long-term impact on our work. We are also actively pursuing potential non-council-owned alternative homes for the Sanctuary.
For more details, please read our 2022-2023 annual report.