My Nonprofit Reviews

I'd actually followed SAFE for years via social media, long before I became a volunteer. Once SAFE moved their headquarters to my area. Fresh out of the psychiatric hospital, I was eager to try and pick up the pieces of my life that I'd left behind--particularly horses.
Luckily, SAFE is probably the closest knit and most devoted community I've ever encountered. I tried other ways to make a difference in the lives of horses, but never until SAFE had I felt so completely supported, heeded and understood. I'm not overstating when I say that my work at SAFE helped me recover from a truly grueling 5 years worth of a mental breakdown. Our work rescuing, rehabbing, retraining and adopting out our horses has been a greatly fulfilling part of my life. I've seen horses go from skeletal, somber wraiths blossom into shining, proud, sensitive steeds under SAFE's care and the personal hand of our staff and volunteers. We also have a hospice program, to offer any terminally ill horses a remaining life in a proverbial field of clover. For the others, our adoption process ensures that the adoptee knows the responsibility that comes with taking on one of our (often special needs) horses. This is our ultimate hope and happy ending for one of our rescues. But for those who must return to us, we do so gladly should we be alerted.

To close, SAFE is the most reputable, organized, gentle rescue I've ever dealt with in my experiences in the rescue community and as a volunteer. For it is not only equine lives we save and change, but the lives of humans as well.

As a big step forward in my recovery from a truly dark half-decade of my life, I decided to start volunteering at SAFE in summer of 2017. I've followed SAFE since I was 13 (I'm 24 now)--even visiting one of their opening houses at their old location. When I'd learned that they had moved to Redmond, I simply couldn't wait to sign up for volunteering there. I signed up for Tuesday's PM chore shift.

Doing so, truthfully, has been a massive benefit to my life and still rather fragile-but far more stable-mental health. It has helped me find camaraderie when I thought I never would; has helped me make new friends when I thought it wasn't possible; has helped me come out of my shell and above all else: It allows me to change lives, via the horses in our care. I help fill once famished bellies with grain; clean the paddocks of horses who used to live in filth; and show love and stability to horses who either have forgotten, or never received, one or both.

Even on the Tuesdays where I feel like I just can't take another second of being in public, or interacting with anyone, SAFE always ends those days on a positive and optimistic note. This is all thanks to my wonderful covolunteers, SAFE's amazing volunteer community and our dedication to giving these rescued horses a SAFE place to recover and move on to a new and better life.