WAYS OF WILD WORK
At Wild Work our ambition is to bring wildness back into people’s lives and to Help People Help Nature Help People.
We work with nature and the environment in a positive way to have a real and practical impact on environmental issues. We want to foster people’s good will to ensure that our local flora, fauna and habitats are protected, valued and enhanced. We want people who connect with the Wild Work movement to have a feelgood factor, to enjoy the social aspect and to benefit from better health and well-being.
Wild Work Within The Local Development Company
Wild Work is a not-for-profit initiative of SECAD Partnership established in 2017. Since then, Wild Work and its ethos has been integrated across SECAD’s programmes, helping SECAD’s staff to be more effective in their work with communities.
In the context of the Biodiversity and Climate Change crises, communities and local businesses want to the right thing for nature, but may not always know how to go about it. Wild Work ecologists help SECAD provide high level support to these groups. For SECAD, Wild Work has supported the development of strategic Town and Village Renewal Plans, Biodiversity Actions Plans for communities and a range of nature-based community education programmes.
There’s ample evidence that relationships with nature are hugely important for the mental and physical health of people. Wild Work nature-based programmes such as Stepping Stones uses the natural environment as a “hook” with which those experiencing marginalisation within our society can be engaged, allowing them to approach other services and their own personal development with confidence and motivation
Wild Work Training For The Community Development Sector
Wild Work nature-based programmes are designed to support Local Development Companies to help animate local target groups to participate in wellbeing and nature-based actions, to connect with each other, create personal resilience and build more sustainable communities.
Our one-day Introduction to the Ways of Wild Work course is designed to support Managers, Development Officers and others in the community development sector to utilise nature for developing programmes that work better for you and the communities you support across the local landscape. The course explores practical issues of programme design, outdoor learning, recruitment of educators/ecologists, as well as giving an understanding of the Wild Work ethos and what it is like to be a participant of a Wild Work course; experiencing the mental and physical health benefits of nature and the outdoors.
Bespoke courses can also be offered based on your specific needs around:
- Social Inclusion, Youth and Families
- LEADER
- Placement schemes (Tús/Rural Social Scheme)
- Business and Tourism