[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today once managed the toy franchise, Thomas the Tank Engine.

Now, she operates a 38-acre ranch in Durham County.

She's transformed it into what she calls a community of healing.

She helps children heal through horses.

Today, we'll meet Kim Tschirret, the founder and CEO of Hope Reins.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side By Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by: - [Narrator For Commercial] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator For Commercial] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator For Commercial] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally, thanks to our teammates.

[upbeat music] We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music fades] [serious music] - Kim, welcome to "Side by Side."

I have been fascinated with your work at Hope Reins.

And if I understand what you do, you help children between the ages of 5 and 18 who are going through some trauma, some pain, social, physical, otherwise, and have 'em come to your 36, 38-acre ranch where you have your own horses.

And somehow, you have a program where these kids can be helped enormously with horses and through horses.

Tell me what that is all about, and how does it work?

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

It's such an honor to be here.

Yes, so we have a program where our mission is to pair a child in crisis with a horse that's been rescued from similar circumstances and a mentor, a trained mentor.

And they come to our ranch for what we call a 90-minute session.

And our kids that- - Individually or in groups?

- Individually, they start out individually.

We have a program pathway that goes, it's five steps over three years.

It's progressive, and it's a skills-based program.

And everything we do starts one-on-one.

- They come once a week, once a month?

- They come once a month for an entire year for one season.

And the kids that come to us, Dr. Qubein, they're so shut down socially and emotionally and are really, really struggling.

- How are they recommended to you?

- They find us a lot of times through word of mouth.

We also get referrals from foster care organizations, DSS, and then we have some specific partners that we work with in our local area that bring children and teens to us, but primarily word of mouth.

- And you rescue a horse?

- Mm-hmm.

- My assumption is a rescued horse is gonna be wild and not trained and perhaps not too tame.

- [Kim] Yeah.

- I've been on a couple of horses.

They tried to throw me off.

- Uh-oh, yes.

- And then you take, you know, a child or a teenager who has been through some mental crisis or otherwise, and you team 'em up with a horse?

- Yes.

- And then you have an adult mentor, a trained person who does what exactly?

- They're really facilitating.

And our horses, we've adopted from different organizations that go out and do the frontline rescue.

Because we need to make sure.

It takes a very special horse to do what we do.

And the kids really resonate, Dr. Qubein, immediately when they come for a tour with the horse's story of rescue.

Because it sounds like them.

The horse has been physically abused or starved or abandoned.

And that's really the first connection that they make.

And then as they start to feel safe and begin to trust, they really start bonding and connecting with their mentor.

And we start working on the four skills that we help them with throughout our program.

- What are the four skills?

- Well, the four skills are trust, communication, boundaries, and leadership.

They're the four things that horses naturally teach humans.

- Really?

- Yes.

And they also happen to be the four resiliency skills that a groundbreaking Harvard study said kids need to bounce back from trauma.

- Horses teach humans trust?

- [Kim] Yes.

- And leadership?

- And leadership and communication and boundaries.

- How does a horse do that?

- How does a horse do that?

- Familiarity, I take it.

- Yeah.

Well, you've been around a horse, it sounds like.

It takes an awful lot of trust on the part of a child, right, to be around and connect and build a relationship.

- A horse can kick you too.

- Yeah, build a relationship with a 1,200 to 1,500-pound animal.

And horses don't communicate verbally.

They communicate non-verbally.

And so horses can teach us, you know, where they mirror our emotions and our moods.

But then they also through their own nonverbal communication as a herd can teach us something about really listening and paying attention, right, and really understanding what is our horse trying to tell us.

'Cause they're always telling us something.

We just have to listen.

- How does a horse's communication faculty differ from a dog, let's say?

- Yeah.

- Well dogs, you kind of know they're happy when they wag their tail, right?

Horses, we know that they're connected and they're calm when their ears are forward, their mouth is soft, their body is a little soft.

You can tell when their ears are pinned back, they're not happy.

- I see, like their physical- - Yes, and that's how they communicate with each other in the herd.

And we've created our own language to communicate with our horses, a nonverbal language.

- And so, Kim, you were in marketing all your life.

And then all of a sudden, you decided to start Hope Reins in 2010, I believe.

- Yes.

- And what gave you the idea?

- Well, I knew for a little while that God had something for me to do, and I just didn't know exactly what it was.

And I ended up finding a book about an organization that did something similar that I read, and had been searching for quite a while and waiting.

And I just knew right away that was, that was what God had called me to do.

So it was building this program.

- And you left your career and you decided to start a 501[c][3]?

- Yeah, yeah.

Never worked in non-profit, never worked in ministry, but really used my business background.

- And you're located in Durham County somewhere?

- We're considered Raleigh, but we're in Durham County right on the border of Durham and Wake County - That would be north, North Raleigh?

- In North Raleigh, yes, mm-hmm.

- And this is not a residency program, right?

They come, they do the session, they leave, they come back again?

- Correct.

- [Nido] Do they pay anything for these sessions?

- They don't, Dr. Qubein.

- They don't pay?

- Our sessions are completely free of charge to our families.

- I see.

Regardless of their own socioeconomic background?

- Yes.

In fact, more than 50% of our kids live at or below the poverty line and they can't afford anything like this.

- So you support yourself strictly with contributions.

- Donations.

- Budget is what?

- $2.2 million.

- $2.2 million.

How many employees?

- We have 36.

Half are full-time and half are part-time that really facilitate 200 volunteers that come out and run our ranch and run our operations.

- And the trained mentors, the trained... Is that what you call 'em, mentors?

- Yeah, mentors.

- Trained mentors.

What are they trained in?

- Yeah, we are a trauma-informed organization.

We're not therapists, we're lay people.

But we basically look at a child and say not what's wrong with you.

But we look at them and say, what's happened to you?

- What happened to you?

- What happened to you?

We're looking beyond the behavior and how they're maybe showing up to the story that's behind that, right?

What's happened to them?

Why are they shut down?

Why are they running all around the ranch and they can't control their emotions?

- Has something happened to you that caused you to be so emotionally tied to Hope Reins or this whole idea?

- Yeah.

So I grew up in Ohio in an upper middle class home that looked really great from the outside.

My dad was a successful businessman, but he was an alcoholic and very emotionally and verbally abusive.

And I never knew safety as a little girl.

And we were never allowed to talk about it, not in our house or outside.

And for some reason, my dad bought me a horse.

- He bought you a horse?

- He bought me a horse.

And that was like- - Did you have siblings?

- Yes, I have an older sister who's seven years older than me.

And she had a horse as well.

But the barn and my horse was like my safe place, and it was my comfort.

- [Nido] I see.

- And so, you know, it was really the only thing that I ever whispered my secret to.

The very first time I ever said, you know, and processed what I was experiencing in my home was with my horse.

And so I really know what it's like to be comforted by a horse when you're in crisis.

And I wanted that for other kids.

- Yes, and so you started with $300,000, the whole program.

- Mm-hmm.

- Where did that money come from?

- Oh gosh.

Well, I mean, our very first donation was $1,000 in 2010 by a friend of mine that believed so much in the program.

And then we just continued kind of building our budget from there.

- I see.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You didn't take your life savings then?

- Oh, goodness no, no, no.

This has been all funded by, you know, of course a little bit personally, but primarily all by friends and family.

- A lot of people, yeah.

- A lot of people.

- And you were named as Women in Business, "The Triangle Business Journal" and have received other interest and other recognition over the years.

So how many children and how many sessions?

- Yeah.

Over 14 years, we've held 23,000 sessions.

- 20?

- 23,000.

- 23,000 sessions?

- Sessions.

- Each one of those would be 90 minutes?

- A 90 minute timeframe.

Dr. Qubein, 16 counties in the state of North Carolina.

- 16 counties have sent you- - Yeah; in fact, we've had people come as far as Virginia and South Carolina.

- Do they come with their parents or with their social worker?

- Caregiver, parent, foster care parent, it kind of runs the gamut.

- [Nido] And do they come willingly, these children?

- They do, that's such a great question.

Our kids, their voice has been, they've been completely overrun.

And then the only thing that we ask of them is that they come for a tour.

And we ask them from five-years old to 18, do you wanna be here?

Do you wanna participate?

- They come and just tour the place?

- They come and have a tour and meet the horses and understand what our program does.

- And how is the session conducted?

So a child comes in.

You know, you take 'em into a barn or out in the field and what?

- Yeah.

They are greeted by their mentor the moment they walk through the door.

We have listeners that sit with the parents.

Because our parents tell us that they have, you know, nobody to really talk to about what they're going through with their child.

So we're really serving the whole family.

And the mentor and the child will go off and they will get their horse.

A lot of times, they will start out their session doing a chore.

Sometimes, they scoop horse poop or work in the garden.

And, you know, everything we do is side by side.

It's really listening and just: How are you doing?

How was your day?

How was school?

Just really kind of connecting to understand where they are.

And then, we'll get our horse out.

And they do all sorts of fun activities.

A lot of it is on the ground: obstacle courses, and, you know, all sorts of fun games that we play with the horses.

They ride as well.

It just all depends on which skill they're working on: you know, trust, communication, boundaries, and leadership.

- How difficult is it to take care of that many horses?

- Wow, it's a lot.

- You have a big barn?

- We actually don't have a barn.

We are working on getting a barn.

Our horses live very naturally out.

They have shelters that they get to go into whenever they wanna get outta the shelter.

And they live in pastures.

You know, they're meant to move and graze all day long.

And so they're very happy living out in their shelters.

- [Nido] What does a shelter mean?

- Oh, a shelter just means, think of it like a kind of a big half barn that they get to go in when they wanna get out of the weather.

They wanna get outta the sun or maybe the rain, they can go underneath.

- It's covered.

- It's protection.

- But it's an open space?

- It's an open space, yes.

And we have the most incredible volunteers on the entire planet, some very, very passionate people, passionate about what we do.

They come and they feed the horses.

They help take care of them.

- What's the hardest thing of taking care of horses?

They get sick or they need medical attention?

They're expensive to feed.

- All of those things.

- Or do they just feed naturally off of the land?

- Yeah, no, we feed them grain and we feed them hay.

They are very expensive therapy partners, very powerful and effective therapy partners.

But they are very expensive.

And somebody's always sick.

Somebody always gets hurt; somebody's always sick.

So it's why we've gotta keep a good rotation of everybody healthy.

- Every horse has a name?

- Yeah, and they all have unique personalities.

- So I ran summer camps when I was in college and after college.

And we always had a barn.

We always had horses.

And the kids learned how to ride horses.

So I'm somewhat familiar with the habitat of, you know, living in a space with horses.

So these sessions are mostly held on the weekend?

'Cause these students are in school, correct?

- They are, yeah, so four o'clock and six o'clock, five days a week.

So they come after school.

- Four o'clock to six o'clock.

- Four o'clock and six o'clock.

We have two session slots.

So our kids that are just starting in our program that are in the highest crisis come at four.

And they work primarily with a staff member on a weekly basis.

And then our six o'clock kids are the next step that come.

And sometimes, they work either with peers in our peer-based program called Bloom and Build or in our group program.

- And do you find that you can fulfill all the needs?

Or do you find yourself frustrated more often than not that there's so much more need than what we can do?

- Well, there is a lot of need.

And there's a lot more need that we can do.

And God's given us a big vision of true hope and real healing for every child.

And we've got some big plans for that.

But, you know, the mental health crisis has never been worse for kids.

- Why do you think that is?

I hear that a lot from lots of people: college campuses, high schools.

Is it COVID that caused a lot of this?

- My personal opinion is that COVID exacerbated an issue that we already had.

And I don't think there are enough resources out there for kids.

I know the state of North Carolina, which I love our state, doesn't rank in the top place in our country for providing enough resources for kids.

And so it's very hard for them to get in to see a doctor, a therapist.

- Really?

- Very hard.

Very long wait lists and expensive.

And like I said, a lot of our kids, they can't afford that.

- Social media, what do you think social media plays a role in all that?

- Oh yeah, I think it's terrible.

I think we're only posting, you know, the good things about ourselves and we never talk about the reality of life, right?

Life is not easy.

- There's a lot of whining too.

- Yeah.

- People get on, opine about stuff and whine.

And it cannot be that healthy.

- Yeah, no, I totally agree with you.

And I think a lot of times, kids don't have somebody to talk to, right?

They don't have that one safe person which kind of ties back to the Harvard study that they say you need, you know, especially when you're in trauma.

- And, Kim, how do you supplement those sessions at four o'clock, six o'clock with education for the parents, with sustainable connectivity between those sessions?

Is there something online?

Is there brochures that you give 'em?

Other seminars that they come to?

- No, we partner with other organizations if they need additional support.

- [Nido] What would be an example of that?

- Maybe different therapy organizations if they need like maybe some wraparound individual therapy or additional family therapy.

- [Nido] And you would make a referral?

- We would make a referral, yeah.

But we primarily are there for our 90 minutes to help our kids and families on a weekly basis.

- And tell me about the graduates, so to speak, those who have come for a whole year.

What is the success rate?

Where do you fail?

You know, I hate to compare those issues to other ailments in society.

But someone who struggles with alcoholism or drug abuse or some other mental challenge, but sometimes it's not sustainable, right?

They get back in the rut and they gotta get going again.

How do you measure that?

How do you follow up on all that?

- Well, Dr. Qubein, Harvard did a huge study that all of the conditions you just talked about in adults all have a root in childhood trauma.

- All have a root in childhood trauma.

- Childhood trauma that was not healed.

And so for our kids, you know, what we're doing is we're helping them heal in their trauma.

We're giving them the resiliency skills they need so that when they have future problems in life, they have a good healthy foundation to lean on.

And then they go back out into their life and use the skills that we're teaching them.

And so we actually have Kids Give Back is our volunteer program that kids can stay in.

- Your graduates, so to speak.

- Our graduates, yeah.

About half of our kids, Dr. Qubein, are with us about two years.

They are doing so well and they have healed, they're ready to get back into life.

They wanna join the debate team or the basketball, you know, baseball team.

The other half, they wanna stay.

We are their safe place, we're their community.

And they wanna stay and they wanna give back.

And we think that's a huge marker for kids healing when you wanna start giving back.

And so we have a huge volunteer program for our kids.

And then we measure with our families at the end of every season, a survey.

And then we also monitor what we're seeing, the resiliency that we're seeing in our kids ourselves on a weekly basis through an app that we monitor.

- I see.

How does one teach resiliency?

- Well, it goes back to our skills, right, the trust, communication, boundaries and leadership.

And I think the very first thing is our kids have to feel safe.

If they don't feel safe in our ranch as a refuge, they can't heal, right?

Safety is paramount and comes first.

- Safety, physical and emotional safety.

- Emotional safety, yeah.

Because they come to us and, again, a person has hurt them.

And so here they show up at this place and they don't know who we are, right?

But they're drawn to the horse.

They're drawn to, oh, look at this horse that has gone through something like me.

And maybe if they're okay, I'm gonna be okay too.

And then they have these loving people that are coming alongside and facilitating this beautiful relationship that we're building with a horse.

And then we start to teach them boundaries, communication, what it means to be a leader.

- So the first one is trust.

- Trust.

- The second one is- - Communication.

- And communication in terms of with yourself, with others?

- Yeah, how to be a good communicator, right, how to listen, how to be a good communicator.

Again, they're very emotionally and socially shut down.

Their parents will tell us they don't have any friends because they're so dysregulated with their emotions.

Their brain is offline.

So it just takes some time for them to start feeling comfortable.

- [Nido] To adapt and- - Yeah, three or four sessions is when our parents say they start to see a difference.

And then they need to learn how to be a good friend to their horse, right?

And then they take that back to their environment and they start practicing those skills.

- I see, trust, communication.

What does boundaries mean?

- Boundaries.

Well, we all need healthy boundaries, right, in our life.

- [Nido] Boundaries are what to do, what not to do, where to go or not to go.

- Yeah, and for these kids to value themselves.

You know, most of them, like when you are sexually abused, your boundaries have been completely run over, right?

And they don't feel worthy, right?

They don't feel like they have value.

And so what we're teaching them is that there's a God who loves them, they have a purpose for their life, and teaching them that they do have value, right, and teaching them what healthy boundaries look like.

And that often starts in the context with our horse, right?

We wanna have good boundaries.

Respect our horse and their boundaries and what they're saying to us.

And we have all sorts of tools and skill games that we play that really help facilitate that.

- Illustrate all that.

- Yeah.

- Where did you get those games from and those tools from?

- They just have been developed over 14 years.

We've got over 80 in a booklet.

- Exercises.

- Exercises that the mentors can pull on depending on the child that showed up and what they need that day.

- And how do you know, and I don't mean to ask this in a negative way, but I just wanna learn from you.

How do you know that what you're doing works?

- Oh, that's a great question.

Well, we know it works because we see it working.

You know, you can have a child that comes... - You see progress.

- We see progress.

They may come on the first day, Dr. Qubein, and they can't look their mentor in the eye.

And then a month later, six weeks later, they're running through the gate and hugging their mentor.

I mean, you physically can see it.

And then our parents will tell us that they are seeing a difference, you know.

We had a little girl just the other night that the mom said in four months, she said, "My daughter is coming back to me.

"My daughter that I knew before the trauma."

- Opening up and communicating.

And what do you do with private information?

For example, do these kids open up and say, "Well, the very person who's bringing me here "may be the culprit of my problem."

Do you have an obligation at that point to do something with that information?

- Of course we have; everybody has.

We all have an obligation to report if we think a child is being abused.

The majority of our kids are coming to us having left the abusive situation.

And so maybe they're in foster care or they're living with an aunt or uncle.

We don't really have that situation, fortunately, very much.

And so they really are coming to us.

- What about the rate of failure?

Not every child who comes to Hope Reins find incredible success, right?

- [Kim] Yeah, yeah.

- Surely, there's some who don't come back, get discouraged or they withdraw altogether.

- Most of the kids that leave our program are going into a higher level of care.

Maybe they're going into a facility and they need extra support.

- They need more care.

- They need more care, and more support.

Maybe they've made a suicide attempt.

You know, those are the kinds of situations that we see.

- What is it that you worry about or troubles you or challenges you the most?

Money for sure, right?

- Oh, money for sure.

- Money for sure.

- Yeah, money for sure.

- [Nido] You always can use more to run the program.

- I think it's, how do we help more kids?

Because there are so many kids that need the service.

We have a service and a solution that really works.

And so how is it that we can help more kids?

Because there are so many children.

- There's a greater demand than there's a supply, capacity.

- And there's a nationwide, this is a nationwide, this is a worldwide problem.

- So there are other organizations like yours in the country doing what you do.

- Yeah, I think there are some similar organizations.

- [Nido] Is there a society, an association that you guys can come together and compare notes?

- No, not really.

We're actually building that right now.

So we are building a training program to help other people start something similar and the association that you're talking about.

- You're the maverick in this area.

So it's amazing what you're doing.

I first found out about you from my wife who read about your work and was really moved by it and told so many people about it.

So I honor you for that, Kim.

We need more people in society who give of their time, energy, and money to make good things happen.

Thank you for being with me on "Side by Side."

- Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] - [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by: - [Narrator For Commercial] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator For Commercial] For 60 years.

the Budd Group has been a company of excellence providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator For Commercial] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally, thanks to our teammates.

[upbeat music] We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.