Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kali Brooks. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kali, appreciate you joining us today. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?
Oaks Restorative Ranch is a 501c3 Nonprofit Organization that pairs horse rescue, rehabilitation, and care, with mental health services for children, youth, and adults. Since becoming a nonprofit in 2022 there have been countless heartwarming stories! One thing that comes to mind is about one of our volunteers, an 11-year-old named Jubilee. Jubilee has been volunteering with us for almost three years now and she helped us test-run our kid program with the horses we are currently supporting. She decided she wanted to write a story about these horses and together we wrote “Poncho’s Pancakes” a semi-fictional tale about real-life session horse Poncho, who wanted to make surprise pancakes for Session Horse Luna’s birthday. Jubilee and I worked on the book all through 2024 and into 2025. The book was Illustrated by 15 Year old Abby, and finally was Published Summer of 2025. All proceeds from the book go to support the nonprofit and was the first book of our series “Stories from Oaks Restorative Ranch” a program created to inspire hope because anyone who has experienced the ranch is invited to share their story as a way to help support. Sessions at Oaks are always free, so this is a creative way for anyone, children and adults alike, to support the ranch! If you want to read more about Poncho’s Pancakes, you can find more info on our website: https://oaksrestorativeranch.weebly.com/ponchos-pancakes.html
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Oaks Restorative Ranch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that pairs horse rescue, rehabilitation, and care, with mental health services for children, youth, and adults. We offer sessions that help people work through past and present struggles and help them develop life skills like trust, communication, and boundaries. Our mission is to walk through healing with individuals, honor and value horses who have been left behind, and to act as a catalyst for restoration in the community! Sessions are always free to allow access to mental care services for people who would not usually be able to afford them.
In addition to this we also have community volunteer days where we send groups into the community to support other horse rescues and equines in need!
We currently have two programs; one for Teens and Adults, as well as our Kids’ program. We also have the option to offer session workshops for groups from ranches that donate space! These programs are created to help people walk through their own personal healing. It may be only one step in the process, but let’s walk it together.
One of our goals is to be a catalyst for restoration in the community! This means providing a space for families, groups, individuals, and horses. For anyone that you consider a part of your journey towards healing and growth.
Oaks Restorative Ranch offers free Sessions for individuals and groups. We also support the community through our volunteer program, and we support individuals in their career journey through our internship program!
We want to honor and value horses who have been left behind. For some horses this means we give them experience, teach them skills, and help them walk in them confidently. For other horses it means creating space to breathe. To heal from past hurts. To learn to trust and enjoy life. When we bring a client into this space, they learn empathy; first for the horse, and then for themselves. They come alongside each other, and together, they learn Trust, Communication, Courage, Curiosity, Confidence, and so much more. Most importantly for Horse and person, they begin to learn that they are valuable.
Have you ever seen someone with no light in their eyes?
Have you ever met a person, or horse, who has shut down and shut the world out?
We notice these things because we have been there too.
Together we can heal; taking steps towards wholeness and freedom.
This is the mission of Oaks Restorative Ranch.
We want to bring life, joy, and freedom back into this community.
Our ultimate vision is healing for hearts and hope for the future for humans and horses alike.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?
When we were first starting out and nailing down our insurance I spent countless hours filling out paperwork for different agencies. Mobile Equine Assisted Sessions is surprisingly pretty niche! (And finding coverage was equally so!)
I really kicked this search into gear fall of 2022 and had been in communications with many different agencies. There were a lot of closed doors, a lot of slammed doors, and a lot of really high quotes given (Think $2000 and $4500+ a year, for an organization that had $500 in the bank). We were given a lead by a local ranch here on an insurance provider and after filling out the forms we finally received a quote we could work with! This was a huge accomplishment as this was our last step in being able to offer sessions! The quote came in at $980 per year. (Which was such a relief!) This covered our program both on and off our own property and because we don’t have our own property yet, that’s really important. It also covers horses belonging to us and others.
When talking to the agent she told me that the agency just wanted to make sure we were using “well-trained” horses with “no issues”. Regardless of me worrying I might lose the quote, I told her honestly: The horses we use, they are the ones that aren’t perfect, the ones that have problems, the ones that need help; that is exactly the kind of horse we use. I also explained the safeguards we have in place for sessions and how we take everything so slowly with the goals of peace and confidence in mind.
I waited to hear back, wondering if I would be back to square 1 again. She emailed back; We got the quote!! Now we just had to figure out how to pay for it! I went to my room to check the envelope where I had started saving for Oaks Restorative Ranch. The Envelope was dated Monday, April 22, 2019, just over 4 years before! I went through the money and donations inside and it came to $80-100 less than what we needed for insurance!! That was huge news!! I made a post that same day and started a fundraiser and within a few hours we had more than enough raised!
I mailed the check soon after and effective June 1st, 2023 we were fully insured and cleared to start sessions!! (YAY!!! WOOHOO!!)
To this day we are funded off of donations, we never charge clients for services, and we couldn’t do this without our community!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be. (Thank you Encanto)
I grew up a perfectionist. I have always worked hard to get things just right, and ensure I am doing the absolute best that I can do. It felt like my duty, somehow. Well if starting a nonprofit at 21 years old has taught me anything, it is that perfection is not only not possible, it is simply not the goal. Authenticity is far more important. I am 28 now, I started writing the session curriculum for my nonprofit back in 2019 while I was getting my BA in psychology. There is so much I didn’t yet know at 21. Over the past 7 years of building and managing this organization I have learned to enjoy what mistakes can teach us not only about ourselves and our self-worth, but also about learning and growing as an individual.
Now I get to teach the interns that come to the organization to embrace imperfection and learn from it, to explore difficult emotions and thought patterns with kindness and to allow themselves to rest. All lessons that I learned through cycles of burnout from doing too much for too long.
If you are stuck in a cycle of burnout, just remember that REST IS PRODUCTIVE. Also you are more than worthy of it, and your worth does not come from what you can produce or accomplish. You are fully and wholly valuable and lovable just as you are in this very moment. No masking, no pretending, no striving for perfection. Just As-Is. Oh, also you are doing great, and I’m proud of you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://oaksranch.org
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/oaksrestorativeranch
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/oaksrestorativeranch
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oaksrestorativeranch
- Twitter: https://www.threads.com/@oaksrestorativeranch
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oaksrestorativeranch
- Other: https://oaksrestorativeranch.weebly.com/links.html
Image Credits
Kali Brooks, Logo by Bailee Hill