Take just a few minutes out of your busy day and try a mindfulness exercise in nature, like a walk in the park, running on the beach or climbing a tree. Time spent outdoors can drastically improve your mental and physical wellbeing. However, if access to the outdoors is difficult, you can gain similar [...]
There are many ways to become more sustainable. For example, learning to garden and grow your own vegetables can help reduce air pollution and provide a healthy food source. There are also many ways to recycle materials to create habitats in the garden, reducing unnecessary waste and creating homes for different animals. Gardening not [...]
Dear Friends, I am writing this in sunshine and blue skies after our freezing cold spell in the UK recently. British weather is a great reflection on life in general – how quickly things can change and how we need to be ready for all eventualities. This analogy sums up our year here at the [...]
Dear Friends, Writing here, from our offices in the Essex countryside the heat is palpable and the temperature is 36 degrees indoors. Sun beats in through the windows and the hot wind brings little relief. The impact of a changing climate could not be more palpable and overwhelming and brings tidings of our need [...]
Dear Friends, It has definitely been quite a year of change and adaptation. We have all experienced the same trends on a local and national scale that are out there internationally – including covid, climate change, equality and diversity awareness, political ups and downs, impacts of population, conflict, migrants, and increased urban and industrial [...]
Dear Friends, We have the smell of freedom in our nostrils at the moment as the 19th of July looms as a date for lifting our Covid restrictions. I wonder what this will mean for us all - but sense we will all adapt in different ways -some of us revelling and partying, others [...]
Dear Friends, Funders and Supporters, As I write, the office is alive with staff and outdoor therapists all streaming back in from their various programmes in the woods and fields surrounding our office. Those stuck indoors welcome the smell of woodsmoke that follows them around, as if hinting of the outdoors and the experiences [...]
At the Wilderness Foundation UK, our therapy programmes encourage clients to explore issues around the challenges they face with their mental health while actively participating in a natural setting. For example, the associate wilderness therapist will sit with a client around a fire and enquire about the client's experiences, whether it involves issues with [...]
Out There Academy We are now taking referrals for a 6 week outdoor and personal development programme for young people aged 13+ in the Chelmsford and Braintree area who are: struggling to engage and stay in school at risk of suspension leading to exclusion finding that behavioural and emotional wellbeing are big issues in their [...]
We are now recruiting for our next mentor training programme. Our dedicated team of volunteer youth mentors play a key role within our social programmes. Our work with young people is motivated by a passionate belief in the benefits of the outdoors and nature for young people, coupled with our delivery of excellent youth working [...]
[slideshow_deploy id='8494']The Wilderness Foundation held a special TurnAround 5 Graduation ceremony for six young people who have completed the twelve month TurnAround Programme with the Foundation on Monday 18 August. The event was held to celebrate the achievements of the young people who all come from challenging backgrounds and who took part in a tough [...]
The Wilderness Foundation UK team are all heading off to Spain to participate in the 10th World Wilderness Congress - WILD10 running between 4th and 10th October 2013. We will be delivering the Social Benefit Agenda which promote the importance of recognising the contribution that wilderness and wildness make to human wellbeing. During [...]
On Friday July 27, 2012 the Umzi Wethu training academy for vulnerable youth celebrated the graduation of its 10th and 11th intake of students. The ceremony marked the graduation of a total of 177 students since the project’s inception seven years ago in 2005. Many of the graduates are the first members of their [...]
The physical and mental health benefits of the great outdoors are easy to understand - campfires, cooking and canoeing pursuits have perennially inspired adventure for children’s writers from Mark Twain to Enid Blyton. Today a Chelmsford-based charity aiming to boost the mental wellbeing of disadvantaged young people from urban areas through nature-based activities is among five projects in [...]
The Wilderness Foundation South Africa was announced as the winner in the Social Entrepreneur category for the 2011 Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Awards Programme at the ceremony held last night, 17 November 2011. Wilderness Foundation director, Andrew Muir was one of four finalists selected for the 2011 Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Awards Programme [...]