The Erme Valley Riding for the Disabled Association have been awarded the prestigious King’s Award for Voluntary Service.

Aside from riding, they provide therapy, education, horse care, tea with a pony for those living with dementia, and lots more.

Peggy Douglas is Managing Director and Founder of Erme Valley RDA and said they are honoured to receive the award: “We were nominated and then you have to have citations, and two of the Deputy Lord Lieutenants visit and assess the group. That goes up to London to be further assessed, and we heard in November that we were actually one of the award winners.”

“It means a tremendous amount. I received the MBE 12 years ago but I always wanted something for the group and this is for the group. I started the group 42 years ago and there were just two parents and myself. Now we do over 6,000 rides or education sessions a year.”

There’s far more to the Erme Valley RDA than just riding. The charity have 10 horses and they've got character, they're well educated, and they know the job they're doing.

Peggy continued: “We've just come back from the Nationals where we took 23 riders and six horses, which is an event held every year and it's the biggest of its sort in the world so we had some nice winnings out there as well.”

She is now looking towards retirement and succession.

“In the voluntary sector these days there are fewer people able to volunteer and enormous costs of running a centre like this, we have to change with the needs of society,” she said.

‘It costs £142,000 a year to run and are always looking for volunteers, local businesses and personnel to help with fundraising, because to do fundraising and to run the group is an enormous task.

Speaking about volunteering for the Charity Peggy said there is no ideal profile of a volunteer, people come along and they shape it around them, they don’t even have to be able to ride as training will be given.

The charity in also looking to fund raise for a new riding simulator which they will call ‘Jack’ after their current one. They are looking to raise £80,000 and hope that people can provide them with case studies and testimonials to help them with sponsorship.

HM Lord Lieutenant of Devon David Fursdon presented the award and said: “It takes a really good organisation to win this award and they are certainly up there with amongst the best I’ve seen. The variety of what they do here is very impressive and there are a lot of needs being catered for here. The fact that it’s wrapped around horses and people react in different ways to horses as they do people. It brings people out and helps with their confidence and there’s also been drawing and painting going on.”

“I like the way it all fits together and the volunteers are a cohesive group. My wife has always been keen on horses ever since I met her and we have had horses over the years so I have a little of the background but she is the one that knows about it and I only do as I’m told.”