Recent Events
Spring Festival Fundraiser A Big Success!
We held our first big Hope for Horses Annual Spring Festival fundraiser on June 13, 2015 at the Marion County Fairgrounds. It was hard work, but it really paid off. First off, a huge thank you to all our volunteers who worked many hours preparing and working our event. Everyone had a blast!
Chloe and Clyde, two of our rescued horses, were there along with a magnificent two humped camel named Rudy. Rudy succeeded in giving many in the crowd loving kisses! It was hard to tell who enjoyed the visiting more, the people or the animals. Those visiting Chloe, Clyde, and Rudy also made some really great deals at our Used Tack booth. It was a win/win for everyone!
Our pulled pork sandwiches were a great hit too, prepared and seasoned to perfection by our board member, Mary Thrash. Mary has received many awards for her recipes and her pulled pork and, once again, proved her wonderful culinary skills. Also available were many homemade desserts, chips, candy and soft drinks.
I cannot tell you how many times we were brought to tears by so many generous people, who did not leave their names, but just showed up with boxes of new and wonderful items for us to sell. Many of those items contributed to the $800-plus we received just at the Hope for Horses booth. Our sincere thanks to those generous animal lovers for their contributions. After paying for food and fairground rental, the net gain from the Hope for Horses booth, the entry donations, the kitchen, the children’s carnival games area, and the horse used tack booth was an amazing $1,800. All monies were deposited into the Hope for Horses bank account for use entirely on our rescued animals.
I will admit that the most challenging of the entire festival, were the events scheduled in our arena. We were thrilled to have a great announcer, Scott Ramos, provide all the coverage at each of the horse events throughout the day. We were also very fortunate to have well established and highly skilled volunteers create a variety of horse events for both adults and children.
Also available were a number of artisans and craft vendors, along with Chinese Raffles for baskets of goodies, original artwork, a beautiful handmade quilt made and donated by the Diamond City Stitch in Time Quilt Guild. The winners of the quilt and original artwork will be notified the first week of December.
We are already hard at work preparing for next year's festival. We will keep you informed as we get confirmations from everyone.