Equine Connection offers the building blocks to life

Times Reporter    

 

Kari Fulmek, owner of Equine Connection, has been honing her skills over the past few years, and now offers the first nationally recognized equine-assisted learning (EAL) building block program series. 

Fulmek is a certified EAL facilitator instructor, trained at the award-winning Cartier Equine Assisted Learning Academy. She offers facilitator training to those interested.  

Anyone who takes the training will be able to put what they have learned to good use in their own business model. The program comes with a 12-week curriculum program, during which you learn how to market your business and how to approach your clients. 

Those who take the training are not always in it for their business. Some are moms who have horses and their child may be autistic or have fetal alcohol syndrome, and they want to learn how to facilitate themselves to be able to help their own children. 

“Some just take it personally for themselves so that they become a better parent, a better woman, a better mother, a better daughter whatever the case may be,” said Fulmek. 

EAL learning has been proven to help develop leadership skills and life skills in some people, and can help people with special needs develop specific skills. 

“Everyone has had some sort of almost personal breakthrough every single time that they come out here, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that you’re going to go home and change your life,” said director of sales and marketing, and facilitator Carolyn Charles.

“But you have an understanding of yourself that may have not been there before. I personally have grown leaps and bounds just from being a part of this.” 

When someone registers and attends the program, they can be assured that they are being prepared for anything they want to do as an equine-assisted learning facilitator, so that when they leave they are not looking for what that next step is because they are already prepared. 

“There is a clear objective for every single program we have, so when we’re bringing people in if it’s a corporate company and they’re having issues with communication, then we focus on communication, we can guarantee that objective,” said Charles. 

Six years ago Fulmek saw an ad in a magazine about the Cartier Equine Learning Center and their equine-assisted learning programs. She was amazed that there was a school where you could work with horses and people, something that had always been a dream of hers. After doing some research, she decided to take the leap and take the facilitator training. 

Almost two years ago she got a call from Cartier asking if Equine Connection would like to become a satellite school for them, so back she went for more training. 

Since completing her instructor training, Cartier has closed their doors because of flooding, and has chosen not to rebuild. Fulmek was the only person in Canada they had trained to be an instructor. 

“It was like ‘oh my gosh, do we go forward with this, or do we also not do anything?’ But then we just felt this program is so amazing,” said Fulmek.

She then spoke with the partners from Cartier and the support was incredible; they told her to keep going with it, and now she is the only school in Canada to offer the EAL training.  

“I want people, when they think I want to do something with horses and people, really research because when you research you will soon discover for your own peace of mind what’s really real and what’s just a fly-by-nighter,” said Fulmek. 

The big thing that Fulmek likes about the program is that everything was done, the research had been done, objectives created, and so she didn’t have to create or recreate the program, and because she has the credentials of Cartier behind them they were able to get Mount Royal University and Calgary Board of Education as clients.

Fulmek teaches the facilitator training for 13 weeks a year, and currently only has six more weeks available. She only takes on four clients at a time so that they can be well trained in a setting where they really feel comfortable and get plenty on hands on training. The program is five days long, for a total of 36 hours. The Spiritual Equine Connection also makes itself available to the facilitators for a year after they have completed their training. People from all over the world, ranging in ages 18 to 70, have come to be taught at the facility. 

“The real connection between everybody hasn’t been age or gender or anything else, it’s been that passion for people and passion for horses and it all seems to come together the same way,” said Charles. 

To find out more about the training, or to register, go to http://www.equineconnection.ca/academy-of-equine-assisted-learning.html.