Howdy everyone!

Today Lisa and I spent the day in Morganton, NC attending the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association's Gang Awareness Symposium, and all-day event designed to educate about gang and gang activity in our state.

As many of you may know, we are active in serving gang-involved and youth at-risk of gang-involvement in Western North Carolina, and events like this keep us informed and aware of new trends and developments that affect us and the kids we serve.

Today's symposium had an Overview of Gangs in North Carolina and, although no one would really expect North Carolina to rate high on such a scale, there are over 550 gangs across 62 counties in our state. Pretty surprising numbers, wouldn't you think?

Also part of the day was a presentation on Psychology Behind Gangs, along with a presentation by Gang of One(tm), a Charlotte-based program that offers a variety of services, such as prevention, intervention, suppression and reentry of former "gang-bangers" back into society. It's a large collaborative effort that is well worth a look!

Like the many programs involved in Gang of One (tm), Horse Sense of the Carolinas is part of a larger collaborative effort in our own Buncombe County called the Gang Violence Prevention Program, begun in 2006. Our Running With Mustangs curriculum is the culmination of our five years of work in the field with adjudicated and incarcerated youth.

To learn more about gangs and possible gang activity in your area, visit this website called Helping Gang Youth. While there, be sure to download the National Youth Gang Survey 1996-2000. Although a bit outdated, it's still a great reference. Or, contact your local police department and ask if they have any upcoming trainings or educational presentations about gangs in your community!

All the best,

It used to be having a website was a novelty; now having a website is a marketing necessity. A website is probably the Number One piece of collateral you should develop for your program.  In my line of work, websites are a big focus for clients, and rightfully so.

But now, more than ever, it is the wrong time to have a website built by your sister-in-law’s brother’s pet squirrel. Here are the import elements and considerations to factor in when thinking about starting your program’s website:

• The Foundational: Please, for the love of horses, DO talk to several website development vendors before starting. In addition to finding a widely divergent array of prices, you’ll find some alarming differences in capability. Some vendors are heavy on the technical side, with no professional visual artists or graphic design capability. Others might look good but have poor back-end software.

• The Functional: It is very expensive to go back and retrofit an existing website. Think ahead now so your website can handle the things you want in the future. Most people today want the ability to change content on their Events page, or add photos to the News section. These folks need a Content Management System (or CMS), integrated onto appropriate pages. Some will eventually sell manuals, T-shirts, or products on their site, and need to plan a shopping cart function. Others want to have a blog.

• The Visual: strong visuals and proper navigation, appropriately and strategically thought out, are enormously important on the Internet. It’s very easy to spot an amateur job from a professional job. Invest in professional visuals so they can be an accurate reflection of your program.

• The Verbal: the effectiveness of beautiful visuals is instantly destroyed by poor written content. Just like the visual, invest in professional writing so that your program is accurately and intelligently presented, with all the right pieces. These pieces include a strong tagline, benefits-driven key message points, language tailored to your customer, and the right balance of information/call to action. And don’t forget to integrate the search engine optimization tactics: keyword saturation, meta tag development, etc.

There are so many other things I could tell you about website development...the latest trends in software, the latest studies in readership style and readability, or the latest trends in layout and design. But hopefully this will get you started

The Riding Writer,
Brenda Dammann

Horse Sense has just launched our new pilot program of "Cowboy Poetry" here in Western North Carolina.

After having studied with Strides to Success, we have begun our first "Cowboy Poetry" EAL School Curriculum at Edneyville Elementary School, and it's a big success!

Kacey Cramer and Laura Anthony, both EAGALA Advanced Practitioners, are the facilitation team for the Edneyville School program. "Mr Richard," pictured above, is the cowboy who helps them with the horses. The kids think he's the best!

Sargeant Gus, known by the students as "Sarge" (pictured), and Masada are two of the horses who make the trip twice a week to the school campus, where we set up a small arena each time. Scout's Honor has also joined the boys once or twice and showed them about branding!

This program was implemented with the support and assistance of Rob Curtis and Kelley Dull of Henderson County Schools. Kelley is a counselor at Edneyville Elementary, and assists Kacey, Laura and Richard with the program each week.

The pilot will last 6 weeks, with 2 weekly sessions. Kids are learning, reading and writing about respect, punctuality, imagination and a variety of other key life and development skills.

To find out more about how to implement this curricula in your community, visit Strides to Success.

Read the article, see the pictures and view the video that appeared in the online paper by clicking here.

Hey guys! Last week we talked about getting started on your website. Here are some specific resources to help you turn your ideas into reality!

Very low budget: Start with a blog! It’s a great way to build an internet presence, they’re easy to set up and use, and you can modify all of the content yourself. Check out sites like www.wordpress.com, www.blogger.com and www.typepad.com.

Low-medium budget: Consider a DIY (do-it-yourself) site. www.GoDaddy.com has a program called Website Tonight that is very popular. Also check out www.webpowertools.com for a low-cost but professional looking alternative. Another great resource is www.elance.com where you can get bids from people all over the world for your project.

Medium-high budget: Hire an experienced website designer! Personally, this has been my choice over the years and it’s yielded terrific results. It’s more expensive financially but it’s often less stressful to turn it over to an expert. Shannon and I both use www.totsie.com –they create exceptional Plone sites (you are able to manage the content yourself) for businesses around the country. Or if you want to hire someone in your community, check out your local Chamber of Commerce. If you hire a web designer, be sure to shop around and get several bids.

I have coached dozens of clients through the process of creating a website. If you need support, give me a call for some coaching! Good luck!

Hey everyone!

I'm so excited for our Monthly Teletopic Call on Websites next week (April 22nd at 4pm Eastern, if you haven't already heard! Click here & scroll down to learn more). I've been immersing myself in information about usability and navigation of websites for the past month or so, and can't wait to share what I've been learning with you!

One of the main problems I see with websites (and with most marketing material, including brochures and videos) is that they are often written from the perspective of the business or organization, instead of written for the the user/reader/viewer.

When we sit down to develop our website, we think of all the information we want people to know about us. But oftentimes viewers never read all that material, even if it's well-written. Instead most people who are on the internet come to your site with a very specific need or question they are asking.

Think about how you navigate when you are on the web. When looking for something specific, like the answer to a question, how do you search? Do you find a webpage and read every word on the page, hoping and trusting that somewhere on that page will be the answer to your question, or do you instead skim and scan, looking for subheads and bullets that will tell you if this page will even answer your question?

Research (and my own personal experience) shows that we do a lot of skimming and scanning, and not a lot of sitting down with coffee and reading the whole website page by page. We grab and go with information on the web. And the design of our websites needs to reflect that fact. Hence Usability and Navigation have become my buzzwords here in the office.

So, of course, I'm now in the process of redesigning the Horse Sense website, actually splitting it into three sites to improve usability and navigation, and to help avoid confusion. Keep up with this redesign process for me and for Horse Sense on this blog and on the telecalls. I always love helping people learn from my mistakes!

Happy Trails,

Don’t have a website yet? You need one!

Over the past year, I’ve read several articles that point to the fact that most Americans are now using the internet as much as they are watching TV, if not more. Wow! I think it’s safe to say that if you want to be successful in business in the long-term, you’ve got to have a website because that’s where consumers are going to make their buying decisions. Sure, networking and advertising and other traditional marketing methods are important. But having an internet presence is key to establishing both visibility and credibility which lead to profitability!

Here are a few simple steps to get you started.

1. Buy your domain name. Visit www.godaddy.com for the cheapest domains on the web. If you're not sure exactly what you want, buy a few for just one year. That way, you'll have some choices.
   
2. Research other websites of your competitors. This includes other EAP and EAL practitioners (in your community or around the country), but it also includes other similar service providers in your community. Make note of what you like and what you don't like about their sites.
   
3. Sketch out your initial ideas of what you'd like to put on the site. Consider your target market--who are they and what do they want? how can you help them to solve their problems? Be sure to include descriptions of your services, photos, testimonials and what action they should take next.
   
4. Consider your budget. Decide if you want to try and create the site yourself or if you want to hire someone else to do it for you. There are costs with building a website and then also hosting it and maintaining it. Factor all that into your planning.
   

Tune in next week, as I'll share resources for low, medium and high budget websites!

Hey everyone!

Well, another group of boys from the Youth Development Center (YDC) here in Western North Carolina (WNC) are about to graduate from our Running with Mustangs program. We are always sad to see them go!

From rather simple beginnings and with the collaboration and efforts of the YDC, our Running With Mustangs program is the counseling and vocational element of the multi-agency Gang Violence Prevention Program in Buncombe County. Running with Mustangs has grown into one of the cornerstones of the programming at Horse Sense of the Carolinas, and we really feel that others are looking to us as leaders in the field of innovative treatment of this specialized population.

As those of you who have attended our trainings know, we're passionate about adjudicated youth, and we're honored and grateful to be able to provide such an effective intervention.

Running with Mustangs, our curriculum for working specifically with incarcerated youth, is comprised of four components:

• Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP)
  
• Natural Horsemanship
• Vocational
• POETIX

We always begin with EAGALA-model EAP, and then progress into Natural Horsemanship. The Vocational and the POETIX components run concurrently with the EAP & Natural Horsemanship.

Today the boys prepared for their graduation ceremonies, in which they will perform some of their spoken-word poetry, and also demonstrate "freestyle" some of the skills they've learned playing with horses. The confidence and satisfaction in their eyes always fills us with gratitude.

As soon as we incorporate these boys' poetry into our Mane Lines book, we'll make them available for you to buy. All proceeds from the Mane Lines goes to support the Horse Sense Scholarship Program.

All the best as we continue to make a difference, together!

Click here to learn more about our Running with Mustangs program.

The marketing professionals (like Brenda the writer for Horse Sense) told me that a website is not only important, it is essential marketing. As it turns out, I had about a half dozen clients that contacted me as a direct result of just simply having a website (several from out of state), and almost all of my clients and competition have checked out the site, and given good feedback. It has given me a level of professionalism in the marketplace, and a resume to show the entire world. Here are the essential pieces of a successful professional services website:

Home: This should be a really fast snapshot of what the company is with logo etc., it should not be wordy but provide easy navigation to the rest of the site

Services: What your company provides

About our Clients: Who your clients are, and how you work with them

Case Studies: What you have done for your clients

Bio/Staff: Who the people are behind the company, and their background

Contact: Don’t forget this one! Your phone and email should be on every page, with one page dedicated to it. I have used this many times when I forget someone’s contact info.

Lastly, don’t forget that this is marketing…you get out of it what you put into it. Good luck on developing your website!

Mike Sowinski, CFO Consultants

Visit Mike’s site at www.cfoconsultants.net

Hey everyone!

Just back in the office after a demonstration at University of North Carolina-Asheville as part of their "Life is Calling" week. Designed by the Career Center at the University to help people "discover their life intention," my husband, Lisa, Liza, Dreamer and Scout all packed up and went to college today!

We set up in the "mini-quad" of the Asheville college campus, and had over 150 students, teachers and the general public join us during the 3-hour event. Richard and I brought step in posts, and set up a 70' area with 2" tape at the top. It was a simple and easy enclosure that I recommend for your calm, well-behaved horses (and clients!).

We invited members of the audience to join us, and facilitated various activities such as "Select & Halter," "Magic Carpet," "4 Hoof Pick-Up," and "Extended Appendages," all simple activities requiring very few props, but uncovering a wealth of information for discussion and reflection. We had over 30 participants in the demos, and lots of students from the Psych Department and a Communications class. I got interviewed by a lot of students from that class!

Dreamer and Scout were excited that the grounds-keepers hadn't mowed, and they tasted (and gave the "high hoof" to) oranges from one onlooker. We all really enjoyed the event, and will definitely bring the horses to college again soon!

Click here to read about other events that are part of "Life is Calling," including a labyrinth and a Feldenkrais workshop. This was a great way to create more awareness about Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning!

All the best,