Junior Volunteers are Great!

As most of you know, Betty and I volunteer at the Galloping Grace Youth Ranch.  There are several categories of volunteers.  There are group leaders who stay with a bunch of kids through the different activities at the ranch – scooping poop, grooming, writing thank you letters to sponsors, and, of course, riding.  There are volunteers who work with the check in process.  And there are volunteers who work with the kids on the horses – that’s what we do.

Finally, there are the junior volunteers.  These are kids, mostly girls, between the ages of 10 and 18.  They help out by getting the horses, getting them groomed and saddled, working with the adult volunteers, then putting the horses away.

This is the first year for the junior volunteers and they have been a God-send to us older volunteers. For the first three years of our time at the ranch, Betty and I did everything from getting the horses to putting them away at the end.  And it was very tiring.  Now we arrive at the ranch and the junior volunteers have all the horses ready.  At the end of the day they take them from us and do all the work of putting them away for the day.  It has made our lives a whole lot better.

One of the things the junior volunteers get to do as a reward is to ride the horses before the kids arrive for the day.  Today, several of the juniors didn’t get to ride beforehand, so we let them ride after the kids were gone.

I got to work with three of the junior volunteers today and it’s a lot of fun to teach these kids.  They are so willing to listen and learn and they do pretty well.  Some of these kids have a natural riding ability and only need someone to help them refine what they already do pretty well.

Junior volunteers are great!