Bella Terra Stables was born out of a deep understanding of community — how much we need real connection with others and how much is lost when we step away from it.
Amber Power saw how horses were changing people’s lives in Washington, D.C., through her work at Rock Creek Park Horse Center. A growing number of visitors there told her that gathering with others in this beautiful place and interacting with the horses — not just learning to ride and traversing trails with them, but spending time with horses, talking and feeling understood — helped them and their families through painful moments.
Some even told Power that the interactions saved lives.
Then came the pandemic. No one could gather in community, at least not in person. The horse program at Rock Creek closed. The impact of that absence made it even clearer to Power: She needed to keep bringing horses and people together for equine-assisted mental health support and personal development.
Today, across a stretch of verdant hills in Murrysville, Pa., that work is happening at Bella Terra Stables. Power and the program’s cofounder Ilsa Eisele, a mental health counselor trained in equine-assisted therapy, pivoted from D.C. to this beautiful farm that belonged to Power’s grandparents.
They provide a range of therapy and developmental programming for Pittsburgh-area schools, individuals and professionals at risk of burnout, including first responders, and those who are grieving or working through trauma.
All of this made Bella Terra Stables the perfect place to host the latest event in Remake Learning’s Meet Your Neighbors series.
DISCOVERING WHAT’S POSSIBLE
“The goal of Meet Your Neighbors is really simple,” Remake Learning’s executive director, Tyler Samstag told the crowd of several dozen who gathered at Bella Terra on May 21. “We invite folks out to spaces to see what they’re doing, learn about the organization, connect with other people over food, and just have a good time.”
As visitors had arrived that morning, Bella Terra’s director of community outreach, Laura McGee, greeted them warmly and explained that the day would include “26 acres of peacefulness, horses and hopefully a lot of learning.”
In hosting this Meet Your Neighbors event, McGee said, “what we’re hoping is everyone just feels how powerful the bond between a horse and a human is, and they want to spend more time here.”
Bella Terra has already had that effect on PA State Representative Jill Cooper, who attended the Meet Your Neighbors event.
“This is my third time here, and I’m so excited that it’s in my district,” Rep. Cooper said. “I wanted to specifically go through some of the classes, so that I could understand it a little bit more, and see exactly what it would be like if you had a student here. Because I try to reach out to my school districts to make sure they’re aware of it.”
That’s just what the Bella Terra and Remake Learning teams had in mind when they planned the day. After introductions and a chance to chat a bit with one another, participants spent the morning moving through a sampling of the experiences that happen during therapy and learning sessions at the farm.
HANDS-ON LEARNING, STABLE-STYLE
In small groups, visitors had a close-up view of the horses interacting with one another — communicating their needs, expressing their personalities, and occasionally annoying each other in the low-level way that coworkers sometimes do. The visitors found themselves learning, and could easily imagine how much students could get out of time spent at Bella Terra.
Avonworth School District elementary counselor Micaela Meinert had heard about Bella Terra from a colleague, and was glad to experience it first-hand.
Bella Terra “creates a calm place to work on the regulatory skills we’re trying to do in the classroom. A different setting, where they can experience it in different ways, connects all the pathways together. And I feel like that’s really important,” Meinert said, as she watched a miniature horse named LittleBit quietly nibble on hay.
For Wilkinsburg’s Community Officer William Coffee, who describes himself as his community’s “kid cop,” this first-hand experience was a great way to learn even more about the ways Bella Terra can benefit his community.
“Our goal is to get a program where we’re bringing kids out at least monthly, where they can just be around all the horses,” Coffee said. “There’s nothing like farm life. Kids need to understand that, be around it — just being around the horses, learning just to be calm. Because we don’t get a chance to do that much, especially in city life.”
Meinert, Coffee and the other visitors had a range of experiences. They were able to brush the horses’ manes and hides, and learned to lead these majestic creatures across an indoor arena.
In the process, these visiting educators and community leaders experienced a sense of awe at these incredible animals — their strength and beauty, their kindness, and their remarkable capacity to understand and communicate with humans. Many of the attendees expressed an equally powerful sense of awe about the natural beauty of the farm.
In an age when we increasingly connect virtually and the use of AI is removing the human element from a growing number of daily interactions, just being physically in person at this special place felt like a tonic.
And that’s part of the thinking behind the Meet Your Neighbors events.
Virtual connections have helped many people within the Remake Learning ecosystem find new collaboration partners. Zoom connections really can become real-life relationships, and digital tools including everything from the When You Wonder podcast to the many virtual events Remake Learning hosts are certainly valuable.
But the ease of meeting digitally has raised the bar for us to actually step away from our computers and gather in-person. Watching people around a table eating a meal, and hearing the engaged conversation and bursts of laughter at these events, you have the same realization that inspired Amber Power and Ilse Eisele to create Bella Terra: Nothing can replace the learning and the growth that happens face-to-face — no matter which species those faces belong to.
Meet Your Neighbor events will return in fall 2026. Stay tuned for more soon!
Meet the Storytellers
Melissa Rayworth
Melissa Rayworth is a writer for regional and global news outlets, and a communications consultant who works with people, foundations and companies to tease out and tell their stories across media.
Jade Hambrick
Jade Hambrick is a photographer documenting life in Pittsburgh since 2020.