The 16th annual Centaur Stride walk-a-thon is March 30.

LAKEWOOD — Centaur Stride invites the public to support its our 16th annual “Healing with Horses” Walk-a-thon on Sunday March 30, indoors at the Chautauqua Mall in Lakewood from 2 to 3 p.m. Sign-in is from 1:30 to 2 p.m. in front of Old Navy.

Register for the actual walk by email: info@ centaurstride.org. There is a $20 registration fee, waived if more than that is collected from your sponsors. A donation sheet will be emailed to you with your registration. Money can be turned in at the walk-a-thon. Checks can be made payable to Centaur Stride and can also be sent to: Centaur Stride, PO Box 174, Westfield, NY 14787. All money collected will be posted online.

Donations can be made directly on our Zeffy link: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/peer-to-peer/centaur-strides-16th-annual-walk-a-thon. There will be door prizes at the live event, one ticket for each registrant.

The Zeffy online platform is very secure and free for non-profit fundraisers. You must just choose to opt out of the platform fee, which is automatically preset at 17%. Just choose “other” and put in free amount “0”, or whatever you choose to pay as a fee to them for their platform service.

We presently have 13 therapy horses. These horses are specially trained to be able to work their magic on a variety of people with various personalities, behaviors, needs and physical conditions. The care for these horses is much more than for the typical one owner horse. Since they do have to be able to switch from one rider to another and one handler to another, they encounter many abnormal and inconsistent cues throughout the day. This must be countered with proper schooling and conditioning to keep reminding them what the normal cues and expectations are. The money raised for this fundraising event is for horse care to support these non-expendable animals, without whom we would not have any programs!

Please sponsor a horse, rider, team or form your own team. Ask employers to sponsor or if they will match your donations or amount raised.

Contact info: Holly.Reslink@centaurstride.org or call the barn at 716 326-4318.

Centaur Stride is a therapeutic and recreational facility that is inclusive, integrated for people with and without disabilities, and founded on the healing power of horses and nature to enhance overall well-being. Although we started with services 32 years ago mainly for people with physical disabilities as an adjunct to physical therapy, we soon expanded our outreach to a wide range of disabilities, including autism and intellectual disabilities and then included people without disabilities to further our mission of inclusiveness and integration. Now, our outreach has taken another step toward the mental health crisis.