DISCLAIMER: These posts contain hints, tips and ideas from folks that have had some experiences dealing with this. It is NOT meant to be legal or professional advice here - just related experiences. Please consult with a reputable professional if necessary. To: equinerescue@mylist.net From: HVIDEO885@aol.com Subject: EQ-ResQ: Equine Expo in PA Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 09:55:10 EST Hi all, Here is a short (well, kinda) post on what we did at our booth and what I learned at the expo. Well, I attended my first expo ever, and was excited to see what an expo exactly was. I know that sounds dumb coming from someone who has had horses most of her life and is involved in rescue, but I had them just for pleasure and never joined any groups, did shows, or paid much attention to events concerning horses. I had a wonderful time and learned a lot!! I was extremely interested in the body scoring demo that was done by the Penn State Ag. Extension, and the handouts they had will be invaluable to me. We had a table set up for the rescue and had lots of interest. I recomend that anyone going to something like this get hold of a video to show at the booth while people are walking by as it attracted lots of attention. One of my board members was able to obtain a video from the Illnois Hooved Animal Society (many thanks to who ever helped in obtaining it) on rescue, what rescues believe in and what they do. With their permission we put a note card on top of the TV giving them credit for the video & thanking them. We showed this over and over all day. People stood there and watched in unbelief at the condition of some of the horses which were rescued, were moved that somebody cared enough to get involved, and were awed at the condition and appearence of some of the horses once they were rehabed. The tape opened the door for lots of questions from people and many ask how and if they could become involved. They also looked at our book of info on New Holland (downloaded from the web courtesy of EPN). premarin (we also printed this info out to hand out with a list of alternatives), and took our pamphlets about our rescue. I also had a printed list of over 90 rescues nationwide with addresses and phone numbers which we handed out to people. Most people were amazed at the number of rescues nationwide. One woman in particular said she couldn't wait to tell her family out west about the rescues and that there was one fairly close to them. All in all I think it was a great day for us. We did not sell any of our t-shirt which surprised me, but we did get a few donations in. We also were given 5 raffle tickets which are worth $10 each to sell and keep the money ($50) from Jokar's Hilltop Farm. I will be doing a seperate post about the tickets. All in all I think we had a great day and look forward to doing another one. It also gave us the idea of setting up a table in front of local feed stores and businesses once or twice a month to reach people who are not horsey people but do care about animals. We were also able to make a lot of contacts with horse groups and horsey businesses. I have been invited to speak on abuse (next month) to one of the 4-H groups, and they are planning on doing a fundraiser for us as a community service project. Several of the businesses have agreed to donate items for an auction or raffle, and I collected business cards for contacts in case we decide to put on a small clinic or function such as this in the future. Here is a list of everything we took in case anyone is planning on doing something similiar. Flyers about our rescue containing info on who we are, what we do and how we do it. Basically it is the info on our webpage. Business cards!!! We also bought magnetic backing the size of the cards at an office supply store and made half of them into magnets so they could be put on the fridge and handy at all times. We had ask permission from several websites (thanks to all who said yes) if we could download info from their pages and made a photo album with information and pictures of abuse. Since we are fairly new and did not have any pictures of our own it helped trememdously to show people how badly some of the horses are abused. (if anyone has any extra pictures of abused horses they could share with us, we would love to make the book with actual pictures and will credit your rescue with saving the animal). We also made a listing of over 90 rescues nationwide available for people to take, as people usually have family/friends all over the states they could share this info with. I had 75 lists and only had about 10-15 left at the end of the day. If anyone is interested in obtaining this list, send me your snail mail addy privately and I will send one out to you. (Kris, I put yours in the mail today) We also had handouts of information on Premarin and alternatives, New Holland and the EPN, and of course we also had a list of phone numbers for humane societies, law enforcement agencies and abuse investigators for central PA. The cost of this to the rescue was only about $5 as I had most of the printing for the flyers donated, and the country club donated the table cover & skirting, the use of a VCR, and a stand for our sign. This was a blessing as we are still trying to raise the money needed to file for our non-profit status and did not want to spend what we already have. I hope this will give others some helpful ideas on things to do, and would love any feedback anyone might have on anything else we could have done. Sharon Rainbow Acres Horse Rescue http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Garden/7321/ ============================================================