Innovation Fund update from Hakeford Woods
It has been several months since we supported Hakeford Woods with a grant from our Innovation Fund, in order to provide wellbeing in the woods groups for men. Here is some feedback from Stuart Young at the charity:
“The funding that we received helped support 8 initial sessions of our Men’s Woodland Wellbeing Group. This group was started as we were very conscious of the fact that we had significantly fewer men attending our regular Wellbeing in Nature group and other wellbeing-focused groups at Hakeford Woods, and we felt that the lack of men was in itself a barrier for many men who may have felt “uncomfortable” in that situation.
We have had up to 10 men attending the sessions and most that have attended have really enjoyed their time and returned when possible. In general, the age range would be between 35 and 70. Unfortunately, getting men to attend new things does not seem to be an easy task — some possible barriers include attending new things, new people, not knowing if they’ll like it, attending on their own, and worrying that it’ll be like group therapy (which it isn’t!).
The last few sessions have had some new people, which has been great, and they’ve really enjoyed their time in the woods so I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to continue these sessions and build the groups into the future. We are hugely grateful for the funding that we received, as it allowed us to trial this without eating into our other funding for long-term projects. At this point, we are continuing to offer the monthly sessions and a colleague is stepping in to try and offer additional focused sessions to increase the frequency for those that may benefit from it the most.
On the back of this and through demand, my colleague also started a monthly women’s group. This really illustrated the difference with the men’s, where 4 dates were advertised that all booked up with long waiting lists within 48 hours, often several women organising to go along together and really keen to try something new.”
You can find out more about Hakeford Woods and its wellbeing projects below: