The High Hopes vocational training program offers a wide range of opportunities to learn job skills that can lead to further education and employment. The curriculum is designed on an individual basis to accommodate each student's needs and goals. The following are examples of areas of study through which students are exposed to all aspects of stable management.

• Horse Care - Students learn to lead, groom and maintain the cleanliness and safety of stalls and pastures, become skilled at basic medical care and gain proficient knowledge of colors and breeds.
• Horse Handling - Students learn how to select appropriate tack and fit it to the horse, learn basic and advanced horse handling and training techniques, such as leading, "longeing" and "long-lining".
• Horse Health Care - Students learn to apply elements of equine first aid, and how to assess medical situations to determine the proper steps to take. First aid includes cleaning wounds, measuring the horse's temperature, pulse and respiration, applying wraps and bandages, and identifying symptoms of various diseases.
• Landscaping - Students learn to maintain trails, pastures, arenas and gardens.
• Cleaning - Students learn to clean a barn while facing the constant challenges of working with and around lots of horses and people. Skills can include sweeping, dusting, washing, cleaning stalls and cleaning tack. Facility cleaning can also be done.

Upon admission to the program, students are assigned a faculty adviser and a job coach who has been trained by our staff to teach in the area(s) that the student plans to study. The student and job coach will work one-on-one until the student has achieved his or her goals and can work independently. At that time the student is awarded a certificate of course completion and can choose to remain at High Hopes as a volunteer to practice and obtain further skills. Students may also choose to continue their academic education or seek employment.

Vocational training sessions are tuition based and are scheduled during the same 12-week and 6-week seasonal timeframes as the therapeutic riding-lesson semesters.

Fees:  $450 per 12-week semester; $225 per 6-week semester.

Scholarships

The program fees collected cover approximately 30% of our costs, and donations enable us to subsidize the remaining 70%. With our commitment to accepting participants into our programs based on therapeutic need, regardless of financial means, we offer further scholarship assistance to those unable to pay the established fees. Fifty-five percent of program participants received direct scholarship assistance toward their program fees. In 2007, we awarded $73,450 in scholarships to school groups and individual families. Additionally, more than $465,500 was allocated to subsidize our programs for all. Click here to download scholarship application form.

To request an application or to get more information about our vocational training program, please contact Kristin Mason, Special Programs Coordinator, at (860) 434-1974, Ext. 18 or email kmason@highhopestr.org