Erasmus+ Project

ANCIENT HEALING FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE: INNOVATIVE HIPPOTHERAPY AND HEALTH TOURISM PRACTICES

Where Cultural Heritage Meets Modern Care and International Collaboration

Overview of the project

The project was completed successfully and delivered concrete, measurable results in vocational capacity building, intercultural cooperation and innovation transfer between therapeutic practice and health tourism. Professionals ended the process with a clearer method, a shared vocabulary across countries and a realistic picture of what quality hippotherapy provision requires in terms of staff, animals, safety and follow-up. Institutions gained partners they continue to work with. Most importantly, the project left a sustainable legacy: trained stakeholders, reusable educational assets, stronger institutional networks and public visibility through the official platform https://healthtourismacademy.eu/. The materials remain available after the funding period, so that new centres and new professionals can build on what was developed rather than starting from zero.

Key activities included project management and coordination, the opening meeting that set the shared vision and working rules, specialised hippotherapy training sessions combining theory, observation and supervised practice with horses, contributions to international workshops, dissemination outputs in several languages, and transnational collaboration visits that allowed partners to see each other's facilities and methods in real conditions. Beyond the events themselves, the project built a genuine learning ecosystem: reusable content, documented procedures, and stakeholder engagement channels connecting therapists, vocational trainers, health tourism operators and public institutions. Visual assets included the opening image (https://visiontree.be/assets/images/acilis.jpg) and the thematic project visual (https://visiontree.be/assets/images/Ancient-Healing-From-Past-To-Future-Hippotherapy-and-health-tourism.png), both used consistently to support communication and a recognisable project identity.

The aim of the project

The project objectives were to strengthen vocational capacities in the field of equine-assisted therapy, to improve intercultural dialogue between professionals who rarely share the same table, and to bridge traditional therapeutic practices with contemporary health tourism models. Special emphasis was placed on practical transferability: every training element had to be usable in a real centre with real clients, not only in a seminar room. The consortium also worked on quality learning pathways, on clear ethical standards for working with animals and vulnerable users, and on sustainable institutional cooperation that outlives a single grant. Through a structured and professional approach, the project aligned local expertise with European standards while promoting equitable access to innovative care perspectives, including for families and individuals who are usually priced out of specialised therapy.

Our Role

This Erasmus+ VET project (2023-2-TR01-KA210-VET, Project ID: 000178327) began with a simple but powerful idea: transform traditional healing knowledge into future-oriented, inclusive health solutions. Hippotherapy sits at the crossroads of two worlds. It belongs to a long cultural tradition of healing through the relationship between people and horses, and at the same time it is a recognised therapeutic practice with measurable effects on motor control, balance, concentration and emotional regulation. By placing hippotherapy at the centre of an intercultural learning journey, the consortium brought together institutions, therapists, trainers and tourism professionals to explore how health tourism can become more human-centered, ethical and innovative instead of purely commercial. The project website, https://healthtourismacademy.eu/, served as the common space for visibility, communication and resource sharing throughout the partnership.