Each and every Hyphen8 employee can use our Pledge 8% time to dedicate to a charity, in this blog I describe the work I have done for Newbury RDA.

I owe an awful lot to Pepsi the little scruffy grey riding School pony who taught me to ride at the early age of six. I am now fortunate enough to own my own horse Crystal. Crystal  not only offers me a real life rollercoaster of emotions but she offers me a real sense of escapism and freedom. There is nothing quite like the feeling of galloping across the moors near home. I think it was Churchill who said the “wind of heaven blows between a horses ears.” A horse offers you the greatest escapism and freedom you can imagine and this is why I have chosen to dedicate my pledge 8% time to the Riding For the Disabled Newbury.  

A few years ago I read an amazing book about an autistic child’s affinity with horse. By being around horses the child (who previously showed no outward communication) began to communicate with horses and eventually humans. I remember sitting watching the para dressage at the London 2012 and being overwhelmed with admiration for these incredible athletes. Riding for the Disabled not only have enabled these superhero athletes to develop but the RDA does an absolutely awe inspiring job of helping disabled people learn how to ride. and give them the feeling of freedom and the affinity with a horse. I am sure these riders feel the same feeling of freedom that I experience with Crystal. 

The Riding for the disabled horses benefit over 25,000 disabled children and adults, this however is not possible without the 18,000 volunteers at over 500 centers over the UK. 

So when one of the Newbury RDA’s trustees reached out to see how we could transform the many books and scraps of paper into a complete system for them with a very limited budget we were only happy to help.  

Given my background with horses, we were only too happy to help and also donated a day of my time for free.  We used the Salesforce Not for Profit success pack to get started and then customised the application so that Newbury RDA now has a complete system. From recording riders disability details, class attendance, School  to enabling Newbury RDA to easily view their Volunteers contact details, training requirements and safeguarding dates stored safely and securely  in one place.

And of course the great thing is that they can now access this information almost anywhere! There are plans for future development for records for the horses, this means the Stable Manager can see at a glance which horse has a vaccination or a new set of shoes within the next month so they can book vets and blacksmith visits.