John Pearce Foundation

The John Pearce Foundation embodies compassion for humans and horses intertwined with the horseracing and thoroughbred breeding industry, advancing equine welfare and supporting participants facing hardship alongside specialist palliative and end-of-life care. Grounded in responsible stewardship, its values prioritize systemic change through sustainable, collaborative interventions that deliver measurable, lasting benefits for people and animals. It champions innovative, higher-risk projects alongside core services, believing positive transformation arises from strategic partnerships fostering retraining, aftercare, health support, and equitable access to care within racing communities.

It funds equine welfare initiatives including aftercare and retraining for retired racehorses and ill-treated thoroughbreds, rehabilitation programs addressing physical health needs and behavioral challenges, therapeutic equine-assisted services for community wellbeing, and transition support enabling smooth exits from the industry with skills training and employment pathways. For human beneficiaries—current and former racing staff, breeders, and families experiencing hardship—it supports welfare relief, health services, financial hardship aid, community hubs offering peer support groups and counselling, and education initiatives linked to sector resilience. In palliative care, it backs direct service delivery like nursing, hospice support lines, and outreach for end-of-life needs, alongside research into novel therapeutic approaches and holistic care models promoting dignity and family involvement. Interventions emphasize preventative aftercare, trauma-informed equine handling, person-centred hardship relief, and community-led racing sector support tackling isolation, injury recovery, and family carer exhaustion.

Exclusions encompass solely individual benefits, pure advocacy or promotional activities, and religious or political projects, alongside general education or industry promotion without direct welfare alignment. Distinctive for its dual human-equine focus on racing communities around key horseracing centres, it prioritizes retired thoroughbreds at risk, stable staff with complex health needs, breeders facing poverty, and palliative care recipients in underserved areas, favoring organizations delivering evidence-based, innovative aftercare intertwined with lived sector experience and sustainable impact.