Hi All
You may have recently seen on the news or internet that our animal park was badly flooded recently, and thanks to the support of SFN members we were fortunate enough to be offered fencing, fence posts and had countless offers of manual help coming our way as a result.
The flooding sadly coincided with a new initiative at our park. For the last six years we have been hosting school groups, Centre de loisirs, and Handicapped groups at the farm, with Paul ( the husband a qualified counsellor) the Handicapped groups became an immense passion for us, and working with adults and children with varying ranges of disability brings us an enormous amount of satisfaction. Sadly, our work is limited to good weather when the ground is dry, this was especially the case of a spina bifida patient who was confined to a wheelchair and visited us last autumn.
Our patient, was not only confined to a wheelchair, but was unable to talk, ( fortunately we speak French sign language... as his carers did not) and we were able to talk to him about our camels, he kept asking if he could be put next to one, and I explained what his situation was to the carers.
I asked one of our camels to lie down, and five people carried the guy off his wheelchair and laid him next to the camel. This sweet guy was screaming with glee at the top of his voice whilst we all stood around encouraging him with tears in our eyes and enormous lumps in our throats. It was at this point that we really realised we could make a difference by extending our zootherapy program across the year.
This got me thinking further, how amazing it would be if we were to have an all weather centre where our special needs visitors could get close to our animals, lie next to them, and spend valuable private moments away from the general public who visit our farm.
I discovered crowd funding ( and despite the recent flooding setting us back a few weeks) we have launched our campaign to fund this therapy centre project. The centre doesn't need to be big and shiny, but it does need to conform to French norms, and offer a dry all weather wheel chair access point. It's my first foray into crowd funding and we're really keen to see how it develops for us.
If you could have a look at the attached link and give us your feedback... or even better some support, we would be most grateful!
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/zoo-therapy-special-needs-centre/x/1702030
You can also find our funding facebook page on
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zoo-therapy-centre-funding-campaign/222493601225449?ref=hl
Thank you for your time