Work with gentle farm animals and people in need

We are looking for volunteers to help facilitate the interaction between our animals and clients during our animal assisted therapeutic programs. We use gentle farm animals and horses to bring comfort, joy and lower stress levels to people in need. Our clients include children with special needs, underserved families, children facing life-threatening illness, youth struggling with mental health issues, Veterans, and senior citizens.

An example of what you would do while volunteering could be helping a child feed a cracker to one of our goats, hold a bunny for people to pet, or be a side walker next to a child on a horse. All of our programs take place outdoors.

Whether you'd like to go with us onsite to a client location such as Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto, or meet us at our barn in Portola Valley for a program like our HorseBuddies sessions, once signed up to be a volunteer, our online volunteer calendar will alert you via email to any new program we need volunteers for, and you sign up to participate only in the ones that interest you and fit your schedule. Most programs last about 90 minutes and there is no ongoing commitment for the number of hours or programs that you need to sign up for. The majority of our programs that need volunteers take place Monday - Friday during typical business hours but we do have some Saturday programming.

We require the volunteers for our healing programs to attend a volunteer orientation and do a backround screening. Some program opportunities require additional training. The orientations take place about every 6 weeks. Please contact us for the date of the next orientation.