AHT AGM 2016…aka, acronyms are great!

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A Horse Tale (AHT) held its Annual General (AGM) meeting today at Zee Grub in Vaudreuil, today, May 15, 2016.

As a registered Canadian charity, it’s part of our mandate to hold this meeting once a year to go over the year in review as well as the future of the group.

We opened the meeting by thanking Michael from Zee Grub for letting us use his sugar shack to hold the meeting. It was a perfect venue to meet, and provided for a nice cozy atmosphere (with the fire burning) on this cold May day. They have always been very supportive of our group and it was truly appreciated.

Then each of the board members went over all that transpired last year, what went well, what didn’t and what’s in store for the future. We covered:

• Barn renovations (such as plans to add in a round ring for the horses to exercise)
• Finances and all of the work that went into our first official year of sending our tax receipts
• Marketing/Media (including building this new website)
• The horses themselves, their care and special needs
• Our Horse Adoptions/Rehoming  and outreach programs (such as how we try to help even if we can’t bring in a new horse)
• Fundraising ideas (such as our upcoming Spa Day, and our Raffle Baskets, and of course, our future Annual BBQ)

We discussed how we need develop committees to help keep things going, and to grow as a group and to avoid burn-out. Our members stepped up to the plate to offer their support and assistance in helping out in all areas, including the fundraising, the marketing and the horse care. Of course, if you would be interested and want to learn how to get involved feel free to contact us.

Finally, as the meeting was winding down, we talked about our vision.

It came as no surprise to any of the members that special feeling we get when we come to AHT. Being around the horses, and the nature is something special, but also just interacting with other members…we all developed a special bond, working together and being a part of something so special. We’ve seen how being here has helped so many of us, each with our own little “tale to tell”…it happened naturally for so many of us, and now we want to share this with others.

We want to continue to help the horses, but over time, we want to further our mission, and develop programs of equine contact, and aim for equine therapy.

This is our vision, and we’re on our way to making this a reality.

We’ll end this blog post, with a video from  Charlotte Thomas Kluftinger who is completing her studies in film and journalism. She had set out to do a general video on our rescue last fall…she interviewed with our barn manager at the time, and ended up making something special – click here to it. After viewing that, we realised that she had captured our vision… she captured what AHT means to so many of us, and so we asked her to cover a few more “tales”.  She agreed, and made a series of small videos…which we plan to share with all of you very soon, but for now, here is her documentary entitled, “A New Man“. We shared this with our members, and suffice it to say, there were a few tears in the room.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09xkhVg8-Q” align=”center” title=”A New Man”][/vc_column][/vc_row]