One local charity received a helping hand Wednesday afternoon.

Western Financial Group in Okotoks held a fundraising Barbecue with all proceeds going to the Foothills Therapeutic Riding Association.

Association President Wendy Campbell says the contributions they receive from companies like Western Financial are the reason they've been helping the community since 1989.

"Without the community support and sponsorship we couldn't run the program," she says. "We now are getting kids coming back as adults telling us how much they enjoyed the program as children. We run 24 kids through the session and we use up to 60 volunteers and they love to come out and it's just a wonderful group to work with."

The association is a non profit charitable organization that offers therapeutic riding programs for children with special needs.

Campbell says their work with horses and local school kids is just another way they can help them in their development.

"We're unique in our program that all of the horses are owned by individuals who loan them to us for our sessions. We work the children's resource teachers to develop a program based on their individual placement program. We work on things like speech and language development and social behaviour."

The results of the barbecue haven't been tallied but Campbell says you can put a price when comes to seeing a smile on someone's face going through their programs.

"We've been incredibly gifted with groups like this who have given us money because we're just a little group with no overhead and our expenses are fairly low so it's been wonderful that the community supported us and enabled us to run for over 25 years."

For more information on the FTRA visit the link here.