ATHENA®

A Classical Academy for Foster Youth and Their Families

ATHENA® brings together classical horsemanship, art, movement, history, neuroscience and learning in nature, specifically for young people growing up in foster care and underserved communities. Many of these children and teenagers are navigating trauma, neuropsychiatric differences and the enormous challenges that can come with finding one’s place in the world. Rather than treating them simply as recipients of therapy, the academy model invites them to become active participants in something much bigger: learning real skills, exploring their creativity, discovering their own abilities and developing a connection to the world around them.

ATHENA® began in 2020, training people to work with horses alongside clients affected by trauma. Since then the program has grown to include Movement Method, and today it focuses specifically on children and young people in the foster system with trauma and neuropsychiatric differences. That work is shaped together with people who themselves grew up in the foster care system. Their experience is essential to what we do.

ATHENA® works by training equine therapy centers to deliver this horse-based framework for children and young people with trauma and neuropsychiatric differences in their own communities. We train and mentor the staff, and the centers bring the academy to life locally, adapting it to their particular environment and culture. Foster parents and siblings are invited into the experience too, because the well-being of a young person cannot really be separated from that of the family around them.

Upcoming ATHENA® Workshops

November 2026 — Smiling Goat Ranch, Roaring Fork Valley, Colorado
March 2027 — Black Cat Ranch, Elgin, Texas
June 2027 — HHH Ranch, Manhattan, Illinois

Three days combining Takhin Equine Integration and Movement Method, $1,250. Participants receive completion of TEI 1 and Movement Method 1 & 2, the requirements to offer an ATHENA® program.

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