Certified Horsemanship Association Volunteer of the Year is Kristine Mika from Connecticut and APHA Earns the Partner in Safety Award
(December 2021) Certified Horsemanship Association (CHA) gives many great awards out to its members each year. The CHA Volunteer of the Year is an award that recognizes the countless hours and dedication CHA volunteers spend changing lives through safe experiences with horses. A big thank you and congratulations to the CHA 2021 Volunteer of the Year – Kristine Mika from Colchester, Connecticut.
Kristine is so responsive to emails and calls and really cares about CHA and wanting to see it grow. She created a newsletter that she sent out to all the CHA members in her state when she was a state representative and now that she is a Regional Director is doing a newsletter for her entire region. She loves taking photos and recently visited a CHA host site near her to take photos and see this host site in action. She asks questions and figures out solutions to help CHA members navigate CHA as a newly certified instructor or a host site.
She has been a CHA certified member as an English/Western Instructor since 2015. She has been involved in the CHA Booth at the Equine Affaire in Springfield, Massachusetts for a while now and left straight from our CHA International Conference in Fort Worth to go volunteer there. That is dedication!
Another important awards given each year is the CHA Partner in Safety Award that is given to a person or entity that embodies horsemanship safety at the core. The 2021 CHA Partner in Safety is the American Paint Horse Association.
This association has been an education alliance partner with CHA for many years. They work with us to have our members learn about how to become APHA Professional Horsemen and are great about supporting our magazine, The Instructor, and our International Conference program with ads for this program. Many of our past School Horse winners were APHA horses and we have done numerous safety videos with registered Paint horses in them. We are currently developing a plan to possibly utilize their Horse IQ program for our Certifiers and Site Visitors to be able to do their recertification tests online. This group cares about the welfare of the horse and the safety of riders and handlers. We have a showmanship video that one of their staff did for us at a past CHA conference and it was a pleasure to have their CEO, Billy Smith, speak at our annual meeting this year. They were a CHA Conference Partner helping shuttle our members to and from the hotel to the Cowtown Coliseum and offering a free conference room at their office on Mule Alley for our board meeting and a discount in their store for our conference attendees.
To see this press release online visit https://cha.horse/cha-press-releases/ and for a complete list of past CHA award winners, visit https://cha.horse/international-conference/#award-winners
CHA Equine Professionals Change Lives Through Safe Experiences with Horses. The purpose of CHA is to promote excellence in safety and education for the benefit of the horse industry. CHA certifies equine professionals, accredits equestrian facilities, publishes educational manuals, produces educational horsemanship videos and webinars, and hosts regional and international conferences. For more information on the largest certifying body of equine professionals in North America, Certified Horsemanship Association, or to find a certified equine professional or accredited equine facility near you, please visit www.CHA.horse.
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