Hoofbeats Sanctuary Sunshine Coast

08/11/2026

Together, we can make a difference! 🌟 Our Bunnings sausage sizzles are sparking hope and generating much needed revenue, but we're facing a challenge: storage for the sausages, bread and and onions before the big day. Do you have a chest freezer or upright freezer in good working order that you're willing to donate, to help us fuel our mission? ❄ We'd be forever grateful for your kindness! 🙏

06/11/2026

Girls' Empowerment Workshop - Nov 14th - Ages 13-14

Being a teenage girl has never been more complex.

Expectations. Comparison. Friendships. Social media. Peer pressure. Bullying. Identity.

Our Girls Empowerment Workshop – Building Calm, Confidence & Healthy Boundaries gives girls the opportunity to step away from the noise, connect with themselves and build practical skills for navigating these important years.

Through hands-on experiences with our horses, practical activities and age-appropriate wellbeing education, girls will develop practical tools to:
🌿 Better understand themselves and their responses to stress
🌿 Recognise what happens in their body when they feel calm, activated or overwhelmed
🌿 Practise simple strategies to regulate stress and return to a calmer state
🌿 Understand what healthy boundaries look and feel like
🌿 Recognise healthy and unhealthy relationship dynamics, including when teasing, pressure or exclusion crosses a line
🌿 Communicating and respecting their own boundaries and those of others

🐴 Why horses?
Horses offer something a classroom can’t. Highly sensitive to body language, energy and the world around them, they give girls the opportunity to experience concepts like self-awareness, communication, trust and boundaries with another sentient being - not just talk about them.

And because the challenges and experiences of a 12yo can be very different from those of a 15yo girl, each workshop is exclusively for a separate age group.

Everything happens on the ground. There’s no riding and no horse experience needed. It’s just a small group of girls, our gentle horses and a caring team.

👭 Better together: Book two places in one booking and use the code Friend10 for 10% off.

📅 Saturday 14 November
⏰ 9am to 12pm, then 30 minutes of refreshments and time with the horses
📍 Hoofbeats Sanctuary, Yandina
🐴 Only 10 places
💛 $250 per person, with every booking helping fund our free mental health programs for young people

Book her place: https://hoofbeats.org.au/girls-empowerment/

Workshops for older age groups later in the month - bookings for those are open too.

Hoofbeats Sanctuary: we're a not-for-profit Sunshine Coast equine therapy provider. Free and low-cost trauma-focused programs for mental health improvement.

04/11/2026

‼️RHODES HAY NEEDED‼️
With all this heavy rain, hay growers are unable to bale their hay and our usual suppliers are out of stock and don't know when they will have stock again. We use approximately 8 bales a week and can come pick up with the trailer if needed. We can manage rounds as long as they are good quality. Is anyone able to help?

03/11/2026

CAMPAIGN UPDATE - end of Day 6
🎯Target: $25,000
💲Raised So Far: $4,404 (including $2997 from our sausage sizzle on Sunday!)
🙏Still to raise: $20,596
🔗https://hoofbeats.org.au/donate/

What Your Support Achieves
💰Donations have been a little slow - and we get it, it's such a difficult time for so many people right now.
📈 Unfortunately, our work doesn't stop when things get difficult. Just the opposite happens as demand for help soars. The Sanctuary operates 365 days a year. Clients to support, horses to care for and property to be managed - it all just keeps going no matter how difficult life is for all of us here as well as our clients.
❓In case you are wondering what your donation will achieve - here's some independently verified information for you about the incredible impact our programs have on our amazing clients. When researchers from the University of Sunshine Coast conducted an independent service review of our programs (including 47 clients) they found that:
🧡Mental health and well-being improves on average by a whopping 71%
🧡The improvement is stable over time
🧡Of the 22 aspects of mental health and well-being they measured, every single one increased at a magnitude far greater than that required for clinical significance.
🧡The magnitude of impact was more than 10 times greater than government funded mental health programs.

🧡Our work matters.
🧡Your support makes it possible.

30/10/2026

Sausage Sizzle Tomorrow!
🌭🌭Come along to Bunnings Maroochydore store tomorrow (Sunday 31/10) and grab a sausage or cool drink from our amazing volunteers!
💰💰All proceeds will go toward our Christmas Campaign raising funds to care for our precious herd of horses and ponies.
🧡🧡We'd love to see you there so do come along and say hello!

30/10/2026

CAMPAIGN UPDATE - end of Day 2
🎯Target: $25,000
💲Raised So Far: $1,156
🙏Still to raise: $23,844

🐴A Day In The Life of the Herd
🪣It costs about $66 to care for our whole herd for one day. Hay, feed, farrier, medications, vet care, worming, all of it!
🗓Would you give a day of care this Christmas?
💚https://hoofbeats.org.au/donate/

📸That's Sooty enjoying her hay and Trixie smiling for the vet on dental day 🤣

28/10/2026

In May, you helped us raise $50,000. We've stretched every dollar for almost six months, and it has kept our herd healthy and our programs free. Now we need your help once more.
Today we're launching Hope for the Herd, our Christmas Appeal, with a goal of raising $25,000 by 31 December. Every gift helps no matter the size; every gift helps to keep our doors open while we wait for the next grant application to be successful.
Here's the link to our Donate page: https://hoofbeats.org.au/donate/
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for always being there for our precious herd and amazing clients. 🧡🙏🙏

14/10/2026

She’s almost made it through Year 7. Now let’s help her thrive.

Have you noticed your daughter carrying more than she lets on?

The friendship dramas that don’t switch off when she gets home. The comparison that’s always there on her phone. The pressure to fit in, keep up and get everything right.

At Hoofbeats Sanctuary, we usually meet girls once it has all become too much. We would love to meet them sooner.

Our Girls Empowerment Workshop is a calm, hands-on morning with our horses. Girls learn practical skills to manage stress, build confidence and set healthy boundaries, before life starts to feel overwhelming.

Our first workshop is just for Year 7 girls. Starting high school brings new friendships, new pressures and a lot of working out who she is. She’ll leave with tools she can use straight away:

🌿 Noticing what stress feels like in her body, and how to calm it
🌿 Trusting herself and her own voice
🌿 Knowing what a healthy friendship feels like, and when teasing or pressure has crossed a line
🌿 Saying no kindly and with confidence

Everything happens on the ground. There’s no riding and no horse experience needed. It’s just a small group of girls her own age, our gentle horses and a caring team.

👭 Better together: Book two places in one booking and use the code Friend10 for 10% off.

📅 Year 7: Saturday 24 October
⏰ 9am to 12pm, then 30 minutes of refreshments and time with the horses
📍 Hoofbeats Sanctuary, Yandina
🐴 Only 10 places
💛 $250 per person, with every booking helping fund our free mental health programs for young people

Book her place: https://hoofbeats.org.au/girls-empowerment/

Workshops for Years 8, 9 and 10 run in November.

Year 7 Girls Empowerment Saturday, October 24 @ 9:00 am – 12:00 pm During this workshop, girls will develop practical tools to: Following the workshop, participants are invited to stay for an additional 30 minutes of relaxed connection and celebration with light refreshments, time with the horses ...

01/10/2026

🐴 Come and be part of the Hoofbeats family 🐴

Have you ever wanted to give your time to something that truly changes lives? Our Sanctuary in Yandina is a place of safety, trust and healing for women and girls, and our volunteers are the heart and soul of everything we do. We're now welcoming new people into three of our teams.

🌾 Stable Team
Spend your mornings or afternoons caring for our beautiful therapy herd, from tiny ponies to tall Thoroughbreds. No horse experience is needed, as we'll train you in our gentle approach built on trust, respect and consent. Shifts start at 8am or 4:30pm and take one to two hours. Because our horses thrive on familiar faces, we ask for a minimum of two shifts each week. You'll need a good level of fitness, as there's lifting and wheelbarrow work involved.

🌿 W**d Warriors (Wednesdays)
We keep our paddocks herbicide free, which means every w**d is removed by hand. If you love being outdoors and find real satisfaction in seeing a paddock come back to health, this one is for you. It's peaceful, grounding work that directly protects our horses, and all tools are provided.

🌭 Bunnings Sausage Sizzle Crew
Our monthly sizzles at Bunnings Maroochydore are a big part of how we fund our free programs. We already have a wonderful coordinator, so we just need a few friendly faces to help on the day. Sizzles fall on a mix of weekdays and weekends, and shifts are a minimum of two hours, so it's easy to fit around your week.

Our W**d Warriors and Sausage Sizzle Crew are open to everyone, so we'd love to hear from men as well as women for these roles.

💛 What we ask of you
We invest deeply in training and caring for our volunteers, so we're looking for people who can stay with us for the long haul and make their role a real priority.

In return, you'll find a kind, supportive community, meaningful connections with our herd and amazing volunteers, and the knowledge that you're helping women and girls on their journey to recovery.

📋 Learn more and apply here: https://hoofbeats.org.au/volunteer/

22/09/2026

Somewhere along the way, it’s easy to lose touch with yourself.

Between responsibilities, expectations, and life’s challenges, we adapt, we cope… and drift.

This retreat is a space to slow down and reconnect.

With the support of the horses, you’ll explore:
• what feels true for you
• what matters most
• where you may be out of alignment

Horses respond to authenticity, not performance.

They help you feel the difference between “holding it together” and truly being present.

This day is about coming back to yourself.

Gently. Honestly. Without pressure.

✨ Limited to 10 women
📅 3 October 2026
📍 Yandina
💛 $200

Book at https://hoofbeats.org.au/events/