In a conversation with Lisbeth Riis Cooper, the word purpose comes up more than almost any other. It’s a word heard often around the 94-acre working farm in Mill Spring that makes up CooperRiis, a non-profit residential healing community for adults with mental health challenges. Lisbeth founded with her husband, Don Cooper, in 2003.
CooperRiis is a place with purpose, born of Lisbeth’s personal experience caring for a loved one. “I spent ten years looking for mental health care for a family member,” Lisbeth says. “And it was just a circle of hospitals and group homes.
After a decade, I did not see any progress because it was just the same cycle over and over. With one exception, when they spent six months at a therapeutic farm. I started seeing a change.
And I said there has got to be something to what they are doing. A few years later, we had another bad cycle, and I threw up my hands and told my husband we needed to start a therapeutic farm.” Originally from Denmark, Lisbeth, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and fashion industry veteran, had the idea.
Still, she knew she needed her husband to make it a reality. And while Don, who she gives all the credit for making the non-profit successful thanks to his business background, was reticent at first, he eventually came to see Lisbeth’s commitment to the idea, and the two began turning an old-horse farm off Hwy. 108 into the beautifully manicured campus and working farm CooperRiis has become today.
