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The eco-group making people ‘happier and healthier’

Words by Smiley Team

Now COP26 is over, where can we find hope for tackling climate change? While individual action can feel isolating, and global policy is out of our hands, community projects could yield more promising results. This article is part of Together Forever, a Smiley series of success stories about communities uniting to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

When social worker Lucy Powell became disillusioned with the care system, she decided to spend a year in Spain studying permaculture in order to rediscover what was important in life.

Her time there gave her a radically new perspective on what constituted genuine care in the community. Taking these learnings, she used them to create a social enterprise, Outside Lives, on a site in North Wales, where she hoped to unite people with nature.

“Outside Lives takes lessons from nature and the wilderness, including its patterns, flows and all those things that make up our natural world,” she explains. “We then apply this to people, creating a community wellness model.”

Their work is based upon three values: Earth care, people care and future care, which involves supporting one another as well as the surrounding environment.

Their headquarters is spread across a beautiful outdoor site with woodland, a polytunnel, vegetable patches, fruit trees and a pond. It plays host to a wide range of wildlife including wildflowers and bees. Volunteers run this site, organising workshops, Forest School lessons, and other life-enhancing activities.

[Discover other inspiring initiatives taking action to mitigate against climate change]

Those who benefit come from a wide range of backgrounds, many of whom live with conditions, disabilities or illnesses. To engage them with Outside Lives, each volunteer is encouraged to take the lead in an area that genuinely interests them.

For example, Dan, a 16-year-old volunteer really enjoys numbers and accountancy. So the staff teamed him up with the project’s treasurer to help with their bookkeeping. Thanks to this experience, Dan is now doing an accountancy course.

“So he’s doing what’s in line with his aspirations – it works for him and it works for us,” says Lucy. “In general, we discover what our volunteers are passionate about in order to get bums on the right seats here.”

Another volunteer with learning difficulties enthusiastically took over their YouTube channel to create uplifting news videos. While a group of young women decided to lead the Forest School lessons for children.

“What we’re doing here is creating a natural community ethos,” Lucy explains. “When you do this successfully communities become very resilient and people start coming up with their own solutions in order to become happier and healthier.” 

Together Forever is a Smiley series exploring the ways communities overcome divisions and unite in the face of climate change, humanity’s biggest challenge.

This article aligns with the following UN SDGs

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