Blue Sky Therapeutic Riding & Respite's PURPOSE Mercantile
Vendor
PURPOSE Mercantile is a venture of Blue Sky Therapeutic Riding & Respite, a therapeutic community for special needs children and adults located in Krugerville, Texas. Blue Sky offers two programs which support our primary goal of providing quality programs for our special needs "partners", including Therapeutic Horseback Riding and the PURPOSE program.
The PURPOSE acronym stands for Providing Unique and Realistic Possibilities and Opportunities for our Special needs Equestrians. At PURPOSE, our partners gain valuable life skills, job skills and have the opportunity to be in community with friends. The three phases of PURPOSE (PURPOSE Mercantile, PURPOSE Produce and Barn Management) provide our partners a wonderful sense of pride and independence as they work to create beautiful products and grow fresh produce, to sell to their community. Also, our partners work and earn a paycheck while they sell their products...providing quality employment for adults with special needs.
Amy Gayhart graduated from Howard Payne University with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art, Communications and Education. During her time at Howard Payne she served as the marketing intern for the University and was responsible for the University marketing materials and yearbook. She was a member of Delta Chi Rho, and served as an officer for 3 years, and as president of the sorority her senior year. After college Amy worked for several years in advertising and administration as an art buyer. In 2003 Amy left the corporate world to stay home and care for her special needs child, Mabry. She continued to explore creative outlets buy running her own painted mural and photography business.
Amy’s daughter Mabry had years of extensive therapy and finally found her true love which was horses. Not knowing anything about horses, other than her daughter’s love for them, in 2012 she began serving on the board of Blue Sky Therapeutic Riding & Respite. She quickly fell in love with therapeutic riding and was given a desire to do more for the special needs population. With the daunting realization that her daughter would one day age out of the public-school system she was determined to create a program where special needs adults could be in community while being able to live out their purpose. So, in addition to therapeutic horseback riding, Amy and her faithful volunteers at Blue Sky created the PURPOSE program, which is a respite program for special needs adults, where Amy teaches art, gardening, cooking along with job and life skills for special needs adults.
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