Horses inspire different people in different ways, and for these three riders giving back to the community through horses is a natural step.

For Grand Prix dressage rider Suzanne Dansby-Phelps, horses have provided a continuing opportunity to impact people positively in and out of her sport.

Dansby-Phelps, 48, owner of Dancing Horse Farm in Atlanta, Ga., is a woman of grace and empathy. Tall and poised, she has the sweet deep smile and gentle but firm voice that reflects her steely dedication to her competitive equestrian life and her commitment to charitable giving.

Dansby-Phelps was short-listed for the 2006 World Equestrian Games team and trained last summer in Germany with her 15-year-old Holsteiner gelding, Cooper. For her, success is a function of doing what you believe in to the best of your abilities.

“For me,” Dansby-Phelps said honestly, “riding forced me to face my fears and doubts about self-worth. It gave me the arena in which to become personally grounded in trust, honesty and discipline. I’ve learned from my horses to be humble and to have compassion for myself as well as for others.”

Dansby-Phelps is a philanthropist who gives privately and generously to causes inside and outside of the horse world.

Her interest is humanitarian, and she targets health issues, child abuse intervention programs, animal welfare, education and the performing arts, as well as specific Atlanta charities.

She currently sits on the boards of the Animal Health Trust/US and the Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust and is an honorary board member of the Shade Tree Home For Girls in Edgefield, S.C.

In 1994, she built an indoor riding arena for her alma mater, Sewanee: The University of the South (Tenn.) as a tribute to her late horse, Devereaux. She supports the U.S. Dressage Federation Building Fund and the USEF National Grand Prix and Intermediaire Champion-ships (N.J.).

She said that she generally prefers to give locally rather than nationally and likes to get involved personally by volunteering her time whenever she can.

“My mother died when I was 18 years old,” she said. “And I took over the family foundation. I was so young, but I had grown up understanding that making the world a better place through giving was not a choice but a necessity.”

Dansby-Phelps also donates her eques-trian earnings to local charities where she happens to be competing. She does this quietly but said her intention is to set an example of giving back to the community and to try to break down the barrier that surrounds the perception that the equestrian world exists in a rarefied bubble of indifference.

She’d already been doing exhibition rides for the Salvation Army and for charitable non-profit organizations to help the victims of 9/11. Then in 2004, while competing at Dressage At Devon (Pa.), it occurred to her to donate the money she won in the Grand Prix classes to Thorncroft, the local non-profit therapeutic riding program.

“The Thorncroft people gave me such a huge response,” she explained, “that I decided to do this everywhere I rode.”

At the 2004 USDF Region 3 Championships, Dansby-Phelps offered to double her donation if an individual or group would accept her challenge to donate $100 or more. She ended up splitting the donation between the USDF and the Atlanta Humane Society.

At the 2007 Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Fla., Dansby-Phelps won the Grand Prix freestyle on Cooper and the FEI Grand Prix Special CDI on Goubergh’s Kasper, her 15-year-old Dutch Warmblood. She donated $1,200 in prize money to local charities that included the ASPCA, The Boys And Girls Clubs of Wellington, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Vinceramos Therapeutic Riding Center.

Her friend and fellow competitor,  Nancy Later, donated her third-placed prize money of $300 to the Lymphoma And Leukemia Society and encouraged matching donations to which Dansby-Phelps also gladly responded.

Dansby-Phelps won the Zada Cup on Kasper in Clarcona, Fla., in mid-February and split her $1,500 in prize money between donations to the Orlando and Atlanta chapters of the American Diabetes Foundation in honor of Klaus Fraessdorf, the show manager who suffers from diabetes.

Dansby-Phelps sees this as participating in a cycle of giving that began with Joe Zada, the show’s sponsor, who supports the sport by providing prize money. She, in turn, believes it’s essential to pass that spirit of giving forward at every chance she gets.

“It’s important to realize,” she said, “that life is about enlarging connections to the community, not about self-absorbed achievement. I’m full of gratitude for my privileged horse life, and I want to be able to use that passion to make a difference where there is need. Giving back any way you can is vital and meaningful. I hope that by donating my prize money, I’m providing an example of one way to do that. This is something that may seem small, but it’s an important gesture that many competing riders can do.”

Clothes Minded
International show jumper Georgina Bloomberg, 24, North Salem, N.Y., has also found a way to make a difference through her fledgling charitable project, “The Rider’s Closet.”

The program collects used show clothes, schooling apparel and equipment and donates and redistributes the items to intercollegiate programs, therapeutic riding centers, Pony Clubs, 4-H programs and individual horse lovers in need. Tack and helmets are excluded for safety reasons, and all donations are tax deductible.

It’s an idea that was born one afternoon when Bloomberg was cleaning out her own closet and realized that she had a surplus of good quality riding clothes that she wasn’t using anymore.

“Initially, I didn’t want to just throw these good clothes away, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with them,” she said. “I thought that therapeutic riding would be a good place to begin, but, in fact, they don’t really use that much in the way of show clothes, which are primarily what I own.

“Now that The Rider’s Closet is growing, though, we’re able to provide them with the schooling clothes and equipment that they need,” she added. “At the beginning, however, I was just struggling with a concept. I wanted to find a way to recycle good, used equestrian clothes effectively. I had friends in college who couldn’t afford the show clothes required for intercollegiate competition. I wanted to do something for them, but I didn’t know how to make it work.”

Then former collegiate equestrian champion John Pigott put her in touch with Bob Cacchione, Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association founder and executive director, who in turn introduced Bloomberg to Peter Cashman. Cashman runs the U.S. Military riding program and is head of the intercollegiate riding program in New York. He’s also involved with numerous other Northeast programs.

“Suddenly I had a built-in pipeline,” Bloomberg said with excitement. “The whole thing clicked.”

Bloomberg’s desire to give back to the sport became a reality last August when she shipped her first two pairs of used breeches to a college riding program. Friends eagerly joined her effort and began to contribute
used clothes. As a result, The Rider’s Closet has grown into a resource with unlimited potential.

While Bloomberg is primarily focused on a Northeast distribution system, she intends to develop a website and would like to expand The Rider’s Closet into a national non-profit organization.
 For the moment, however, Bloomberg oversees the program from her garage, where donations arrive weekly from a myriad of contributors, mostly in the Northeast, but some from as far away as Tennessee and California.

She has approved drop boxes for volunteers in California and in New York. They forward collected clothes and equipment to her, as does the U.S. Hunter/Jumper Association, which has sanctioned drop boxes at their clinics. The Equus Foundation also makes regular clothing donations, sometimes as many as 50 shirts at a time.
 
Bloomberg enjoys the intimate, hands-on involvement of sorting donations and sifting through requests. She does the actual shipping herself and said that she responds to every request, which often comes by
hand-written letters. If she doesn’t have the specific item on hand, she finds a way to provide it.

“I don’t want to disappoint anybody,” she said with a smile.

Bloomberg collects request letters and thank-you letters that she’s received to date. One is from an 88-year-old woman in Los Angeles who couldn’t afford a riding jacket for her niece who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. The young girl longed to show, but her parents were unable to provide the show clothes necessary. Bloomberg found a match in the right size jacket and sent it to the woman who in turn wrote a heartfelt letter of thanks.

These letters are close to Bloomberg’s heart in more ways than one. In finding a way to provide riding clothes for people who love riding but are denied their desire because of circumstance, she is, in fact, giving the biggest part of herself, which is her profound love of the sport. She knows how lucky she is to have the resources to pursue her equestrian dreams. Her goal is to make that possible for as many other people as she can.

“We have the ability to change people’s lives by helping to reduce their costs,” she said thoughtfully. “I hope that through this effort people who cannot afford it will be given the opportunity to keep riding and showing.”

Bloomberg, because of her high profile on the show circuit and her celebrity status as the youngest daughter of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is in the unique position of being able to create enormous good will and recognition for her charitable efforts from within as well as from outside the sport.

Riding For A Cause
Rachel Lowell-Greene, an event rider from Brentwood, N.H., is another equestrian who has translated her passion for horses into compassion for others. A 49-year-old mother of two young children, Lowell-Greene is a professional trainer and instructor who has been eventing for the past 35 years.

Four years ago, she became a volunteer co-coordinator for the Seacoast Interfaith Hospitality Network, a charitable organization affiliated with her local United Church of Christ Pilgrim Church that addresses the issue of homelessness in her community. The IHN provides housing and meals for families who have lost their homes through the devastating catastrophe of fire or flood or who have slipped into crisis from illness or a severe financial reversal.

The Seacoast IHN isn’t based on religious content but utilizes local faith congregation classrooms because they don’t own a shelter building. They organize a system of volunteers to cook meals and oversee clean, safe shelter for homeless families with children who statistically are the fastest growing homeless segment of the population.

Lowell-Greene said that her work with the IHN opened her eyes and her heart to the reality of homelessness, to the demoralizing pain of families that do not have what most people, and certainly everyone in the horse world, takes for granted—a roof over their heads.

“IHN has stretched my perspective and made me re-examine my own life,” she explained. “I have seen that even though my life has its challenges, I have it easy.”

Following the example of a physician friend who raised money for a patient with leukemia by running the Bermuda marathon, Lowell-Greene dedicated her 2006 competitive season to raising money for IHN by accepting pledges based on the results of competing.

She sent 200 letters, entitled “Ride With Roo” to family, friends and horse enthusiasts explaining her donation plan and asking for their support.

Lowell-Greene competes at the preliminary level on her 11-year-old Thoroughbred cross mare, Irish Light, a.k.a. “Roo.”

“To gallop and jump my wonderful horse across the countryside and raise money and awareness for a program that I strongly support? What a no-brainer!” Lowell-Greene said.

Lowell-Greene structured her proposal so that individuals could make a donation directly to IHN or they could pledge any amount of money per event based on her placing first, second or third in listed competitions.

“I probably should have added fourth or fifth,” she added with a laugh.

Lowell-Greene and Roo qualified for the 2006 American Eventing Championships (N.C.) and she hopes to qualify again this year. To date, she’s raised more than $7,500 for her cause and will be sending out 300 more letters throughout the month of June soliciting support for her next eight or nine competitions.

She believes that anyone can have an impact on people in need by connecting their passion to raising money for a cause. As a mother, Lowell-Greene’s compassion for homeless families motivated her to commit herself to do something risky and visible, despite her own sometimes overwhelming responsibilities to her family and her professional equestrian life.

Her gratitude for her privileged life and her powerful connection to her brave and inspiring horse gave her the courage to shine a light on homelessness. She shifted her focus away from her own personal drive for competitive success and moved it onto a plan of charitable action that she hopes other equestrians will consider emulating.

“The most amazing lesson I’ve learned through my participation in raising funds for IHN is that the gifts that have touched my life are immeasurable in value,” Lowell-Greene reflected. “I have received so much more than I have given.”

You Can Participate Too
Georgina Bloomberg asked that anyone who would like to contribute should send used riding clothes that are in good condition to: The Rider’s Closet, Gotham North, 741 Titicus Road, North Salem, NY 10560.

To contact Rachel Lowell-Greene regarding her fund-raising program “Ride With Roo,” please send an e-mail to her at harvesthill@verizon.net.