NAMIBIA: Twice a week, Susan De Meyer welcomes children from the Hope Village Orphanage and Dagbreek School for Children with Disabilities at the Bergheim Country Estate on the outskirts of Namibia’s capital Windhoek.
They’re here to take part in the ‘Enabling through the Horse Program’, devised for children with special needs.
They’re learning equestrian skills as a form of therapy to assist in developing and improving their cognitive and psycho-motor functions.
These youngsters aged between five and 15 years have various disabilities and development disorders including cerebral palsy and foetal alcohol syndrome.
A positive change in the children’s lives
A former teacher and equestrian, Susan de Meyer says she was inspired by her own experience with her dyslexic son who showed significant improvements when he began horse-riding as a hobby.
“It is an immense advantage to all disabled kids. It helps them to balance, it helps them with their equilibrium, it helps them to get a good posture so that they can sit behind a desk and do their schoolwork. They also, it helps them with speech disabilities. They start talking when they ride, because the horse is an extension of the body if you sit on it,” she says.
Chriszell Louw is the Junior Phase Teacher at Public Dagbreek School for Children with Disabilities. She believes there’s already been a remarkable change in the children she brings here.
“They were scared, some of them were very scared when they started with the horse riding but now they are very excited. If they hear we’re going to the horses they are very excited and they kind of just want to go by themselves,” says Louw.
The programme is supported by Richard Frankle, the President of the Namibia Equestrian Federation, the governing body for all equestrian sports in the country.
Frankle says the long-term objective of the programme is to produce para-athletes in the disciplines of equestrian sports which include show jumping, endurance horse-racing and dressage. He says the initial lessons are more daunting for the parents rather than children.
“I guess parents, when they initially think of their children climbing on the back of a fairly big animal there must be a little bit of fear, a little bit of worry, is this going to be OK for my child? But that was very, very quickly overcome as soon as both parents, teachers and the community at large started to see almost the immediate benefits for these children through the program,” says Frankle.
Africanews and AP
