A Roadmap for World Horse Welfare

the new name for the ILPH

Why has our charity changed its name?  Quite simply, so that we can do more for horse welfare both in the UK and overseas; and to do this we have created a ‘roadmap’ to guide our future development.
From an operational perspective, the roadmap for World Horse Welfare is a shift in the way we look at horse welfare abuse and the origins of this abuse. It takes a more complete approach to our work, and provides us with the opportunity to expand the role of the charity to tackle the root causes, as well as the effects, of horse cruelty. It recognises that the charity cannot be the answer for every challenge to horse welfare, but that it can play a more prominent role in defining the problems and coordinating practical solutions.

The roadmap is founded on the achievements of the ILPH over the past 81 years, such as our outstanding work in the rehabilitation and rehoming of horses within the UK. It seeks to build on these successes, but also acknowledges the path we have increasingly been taking in recent years, and where we intend to go over the next decade.

This roadmap is a step change in the life of the charity; it develops our outlook from an organisation that was once primarily focused around the ‘protection’ of the individual horse to one that supports the ‘welfare’ of many.
What does this mean for our operations in practice? 

For UK Welfare:

• Establishing a way to define the major causes of horse welfare abuse in the UK and to propose practical solutions.
• Focusing on education as a means to tackle the known major causes of horse welfare abuse, such as horse obesity.
• Maintaining our position as the premier organisation for the recovery, rehabilitation and rehoming of horses, through our network of Field and Investigation Officers, and Recovery and Rehabilitation Centres.

For International Training:

• Developing a more regional outlook to our training projects, like our current focus on Central America, to enable us to maximise the use of native trainers on all our courses.
• Establishing a network of affiliates in all countries where we work, to ensure we have a practical link to these countries after we have left.
• Expanding our projects to include associated skills to make a lasting difference, such as business training.

For Campaigning:

• Completing a job that was our founding campaign, namely the abolition of the long distance transport of horses for slaughter within Europe. We are winning this fight, but only by campaigning across Europe.
• Integrating Campaigns further into our UK Welfare and International Training Operations so that we provide comprehensive solutions for full breadth of challenges to horse welfare, as we have started to do in Project Romania.
• Campaigning to change policy, practice and attitudes to promote our vision for a world where horses are used but never abused.

The roadmap sets out clear objectives for the future development of our work.  However it also recognises that to succeed we need to at least double our income over the next five years, and to do this we have to attract new supporters and strengthen our relationship with existing supporters.  We can only reach a wider audience through raising our profile, and we believe that a vital ingredient in achieving this is renaming the ILPH to World Horse Welfare; a name that not only better reflects who we are, but is also more meaningful to those who have not yet heard of us.

Exciting times lie ahead for our charity.  Through your continued support we look forward to working with you and sharing with you the future successes of World Horse Welfare.