In an increasingly digital world, we often forget the benefits that spending time in nature can provide us, The Wilderness Foundation is working hard to combat the effects that spending too much time online is having on our culture.

In this episode of On The Same Landing Page, we speak to Jo Roberts, CEO of The Wilderness Foundation as she explains how successful partnerships and building a strong brand have helped to increase their number of beneficiaries from 3,000 to 8,000 in just 5 years. With a history of successful campaigns and programs, Jo is a real leader in the non-profit space, you don’t want to miss this episode!

 

Jason
Hello and welcome to on the same landing page this year to coincide with our mission to unlock 2 million in Google ads grants for charities. We’re focusing on issues affecting non-profit organisations across the UK. As always, I’m joined by my co-host, Astra Newton, head of advertising. Hello.

Astra
Hello. Hello.

Jason
And we’re joined by Jo Roberts, the CEO of Wilderness Foundation. Now, Wilderness Foundation focussed on the effects of the wilderness on developing youth leadership. This involves building leadership based on environmental awareness, ethics, developing positive wellbeing and mental health in young people who are vulnerable or at risk. Welcome to the episode, Joe. Nice to have you on.

Jo
Oh, well, thank you for having me. It’s it’s wonderful to talk to you.

Jason
And Joe, you’re you’re also from Chelmsford and it’s as I part of it, we share the same neck of the woods, but originally the. Can you tell me about the origins of this charity of Wilderness Foundation, how it came to be, and also your role within it.

Jo
So the, the Wilderness Foundation was actually founded in 1976. It followed on from the an organisation in South Africa called The Wilderness Leadership School, which is founded by an inspirational conservationist called Dr. Ian Player, who was very famous for saving the white rhino from extinction. I think when he got involved there were 200 white rhinos left in southern in South Africa.

Massive poaching and hunting. And Ian was the one who started the whole rehabilitation of rhino by bringing them to Whipsnade Zoo and across the world for breeding programmes. But they used to do rhino capture on horseback with the first ever designed anaesthetising drug gun. So quite a rich history. And and he was known as “Madollo” in Zulu, which meant the knee because he’d been he had damaged his knee very badly as a child and was walked with a limp and a stick through the wilderness.

So he founded this movement which was around taking people in deep immersions into the wild by going into wildness, sleeping around a campfire without tents under the stars, close to nature and close to big animals. He found that people went through a transformational change in their relationship, not just to themselves, to each other, but to the natural world.

And he talked about the fact that this work would help people then feel so passionately engaged and connected that they would want to do something to protect it. So that was the origins of the organisation and started taking young, black and white South Africans together on wilderness trails to build a common humanity. That was during the apartheid years, a very transformational entrepreneurial work.

And he then sort of had some really sort of amazing people who started to follow his work in the early days, such as the Duke of Wellington and the Aspinall, etc., who started to see what happened when you went into the wild. And he then founded the UK Wilderness Trust at that point. And the idea was to try and get people out to Africa on these transformation journeys.

And it was a very interesting start. Not a lot of people would be dashing out to South Africa to sleep on the ground under the stars, but it sort of became a movement in and of itself , because he was a strong union. He spoke incredibly eloquently about the spiritual value of the wilderness and how that filled kind of a missing link for many people to have a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves.

And so that’s where we started. And then I got involved in 98, having read his book called Shadow and Soul. I’ve known him as a child and a young person and then arranged to meet with the Wilderness Trust here in the UK in 1998 when I moved from Luxembourg and and said I wanted to help, I wanted to do more.

And so I got very involved within founding a project called In their Work, which had already started in South Africa. But I wanted to raise money to get more young South African youth who grew up in townships, who were excluded from wilderness and nature, and to see whether I could raise money to to get those young people out into the wild.

And so that’s how I first got involved as a young white South African myself who’d had a very privileged engagement with the natural world. My dad was a conservationist and a philanthropist and a doctor, and there were so many others in my community who had been deprived of that. So it was a very driven wanting to put something back moment and wow.

Jason
So that is what a rich history that’s got. It’s a huge amount of work that you guys have done and people that you’ve changed the lives of. And how does it manifest itself now nowadays, and has the how has that changed? So in terms of the different services you offer outside of perhaps the core offering of getting people into the wilderness?

Is there any other parts of the any other projects that you guys work on that are influenced by that original incentive?

Jo
Yes. So so once we once I started to get my teeth into it here, I started to also question why we are only sending people to South Africa. I didn’t want to lose that work because it was the kind of spiritual home of our work. So we continued to send groups of people out to South Africa, and I worked very hard on schools and cadet groups and driving those leadership programs that went up to Africa and built in a community volunteering element to it as well.

But I started to question why we’re not taking more people in the UK into our own wild spaces here. We don’t have pure wilderness, but we have spaces like Scotland and Wales, Dartmoor Peak District. They were they were places of great beauty, which weren’t wilderness, but they were wild space and started to say, How did we do more to take people into our own backyard?

And I used to sort of talk a lot about, you know, you could find wilderness in your nettle patch if it was wild enough and you were able to settle into it. So you started to then grow programs. So in Baby was running in South Africa, but we started to do some work on a project called Turnaround, which again came from a South African stimulus, working with very vulnerable youth, many of them coming through police custody or coming from the edge of youth offending and taking those young people with us on a journey through wilderness with mentoring and a lot of personal growth and therapy to help them turn their lives around.

And that project’s been running since 2007. But we really started to research how could Wilderness work and behaviour change our mental health from about the early 2000s? So it’s been three years just researching what what is it that makes this work really make a difference? And turnaround is still running up. Just we just been interviewing the next group out tomorrow to go canoeing Loch Lomond for a week and wild camping and we see an 85% of those young people going into further educational employment, showing significant changes in their self-esteem and mood and confidence and employability.

So the project still lives on in Bay Wood, now runs in Scotland under the name of Troon, which means brave. And I keep harping on Braveheart, but it does it does mean brave. And in Gaelic and again, taking people into the wild to heal their mental health. And then we’re running about eight or nine other major programmes to do with domestic violence called Blossom Brave Futures, which is again mental health.

Working with young people with special education needs who really seem to settle in a wild space where there’s a kind of a settling down, a grounding, particularly if you come from somebody with Neurodiverse needs, you’re able to kind of work within a natural setting. ADHD kids flourish in the setting and so do adults. So do I think I’m a real ADHD adult and I settle in the wild.

So we’ve created and run a whole series of programs that continue year after year and what needs changing. But they run very successfully.

Jason
How they all get managed, Are they managed individually those projects, or is there someone that looks after a group of them? It must be quite difficult to look at so many different areas that can affect someone’s life and manage them well. I.

Jo
I think from a modelling point of view how, how we kind of brought out something that is kind of manageable was that we have project leaders so somebody will be responsible for their project and they’re given the kind of autonomy and the space to to be in charge of that project. Obviously they work with supervision and they come into group work within the organisation.

They are part of the team, but they have overall responsibility for their programme and I’ve managed to hold on to involvement in one in particular, which is the Turnaround project, which I founded in 2007. So I kind of cling on my little fragile fingertips to that one because I’m so passionate about getting out and seeing the work in action.

Otherwise I can’t talk about it myself. But other other than that, we have amazing project heads who who look after those programmes.

Jason
Well, all the skills that are required for that kind of role? The project management, maybe that’s the best way of telling it. But to manage projects like that successfully, what do you need to have in you as a person?

Jo
Commitment, reliability, really, really important and a real passion for why you’re doing the work. I mean, I think this is work that is heart driven rather than head driven. So you’ve got to have somebody who is willing to get up, do the work, and do whatever it takes to make that work and not just be thinking a 9 to 5 kind of mentality.

It’s a kind of much bigger, bigger process. But they also need to be extremely compassionate. And we work with incredibly vulnerable people who often dysfunctional and can be incredibly challenging in terms of not turning up for things or, you know, and we always try to have somebody who look for the back story in life, you know, what is that back story?

Why did somebody not turn up? It’s not just because they’re disinterested, it’s because they haven’t quite got themselves regulated to get up in the morning or they don’t have money for the bus or they can’t return a call because they don’t have credit. So you’ve got to kind of have a really broad pair of shoulders to to handle the work.

And you’ve also got to be able to recognise your own capacity and then to be able to be vulnerable enough to say, I think I’m going to need a couple of days to just get over this or I need help, or can I take therapy or coaching or I think we looking for humility and vulnerability at the same time, if that makes sense.

And then I think the commitment and reliability is absolutely critical because if you you need to be there all the time to hold that up. But a lot of what changes manage the volunteers as well. So they need to be able to be really good managers in their own right too, because your volunteers are coming for a driver that’s around a need that they fulfilling because they want to make a difference.

So they want to have purpose, so they want to belong. So you have to be able to run what you’re doing, work with your group and at the same time look after your volunteer force. So we have got overall management of all of that. But you’re it for that.

Astra
I guess as well. You’ve got sort of like two schools of people. They always have to wear two hats, the people who are there to help the therapy side of things. But also you are The Wilderness Foundation and you do like a lot of rewilding and environmental conservation as well, don’t you? Can you just talk a little bit about how you fit together the therapy side of things with the more ecological side of things for the environment, interestingly.

Jo
So I feel like we are like a walking Venn diagram, basically. So that sweet spot in the middle. And I think that’s what’s made our charity feel very special. And it’s sort of been we had judge business school involved for a while and they were saying what made us unique was the sweet spot between the people work and the environmental work.

And so every so we are we’ve got a huge environmental driver about, you know, we need a healthy environment for its own sake, but we also need a healthy environment for our human wellbeing. And I get really upset when we talk about using nature or making use of ecosystem services, which is a very popular term at the moment, because actually nature deserves its own respect and rights in my opinion.

And a great purist in this. And I think that we we need to not just be looking after people, we need to look after nature. And so our work, the sweet spot is if you came here for your therapeutic engagement, you would learn leave no trace ethics. You’d learn about biodiversity and learn around systems thinking.

And if you came here as a child or a young person for environmental education and we’ve got 8000 participants coming through, you’d also then be learning how to count in your fingers to look after your wellbeing and help your stress level and how to breathe and the importance of nature and feeling better and finding the language about feeling better and talking about emotion.

So, you know, we’re trying to drive both sides in whichever piece of work we do because we think this directly interconnected and equally important. And so I you know, I am very passionate about it and I’m a great advocate for, as I said, the integrity of nature for itself, but also how important it is for healing people at the same time.

Jason
Yeah, there’s a there’s a huge amount of impact. I mean, the numbers you just just gave us there in terms of the thousands, you say 8000 just through that initiative.

Jo
Through all of our programs. So we’ve grown I mean, I think maybe five years ago we were about 3000 beneficiaries. This last year we’ve had 8000 beneficiaries. So it’s you know, it’s an enormous growth. And I think also I know we you know, we’re looking at the sort of charitable business side of what we do. But I was just looking at our figures before 2019, our restricted program.

So the ones that are direct delivery programs had a turnover. Gosh, what did I put? I write down, we’ve grown 128%. We had a turnover of 183k people in 2019 and those programs have risen to 400k in 2022. So we’ve had 128% growth since before COVID. Wow. So that’s, you know, so that’s driving these numbers, that’s driving this kind of growth spurt.

So it’s it’s really interesting when you when you analyse it and you look down on it, you see Well, that’s a that’s interesting.

Jason
When you take a seconds to count what the work is actually is doing is, is quite must be quite good. It gives you a lot back. I mean in terms of all of that impressive growth, what do you think has been the biggest driver? What might be the most successful projects? I’m sure that there’s success in loads of them, but what’s been the the key the key success that you’ve had in the last year or so?

Jo
Okay. So putting my, my, my Venn diagram back in place, the environmental education, I mean, we have got an inspirational team of environmental educators. I mean, they are they run their little unit and they are just extraordinary human beings because they’re bubbly and engaging and full of interest and full of knowledge, but they do it in such an amazing way.

So I think that’s an enormous bonus. We’ve been lucky to be something called Green Influencers, which was funded by the Ernest Cook Trust. Terry’s been driving a whole lot of youth ambassador programmes for young people and environment. But the big thing, I think a big success in the last couple of years has been partnerships. So we’re now partnering the National Trust at Hatfield Forest and delivering their environmental education.

And we were also working at something called Spains Hall Estate, which is the first beaver reintroduction in Essex. So we’re delivering the beaver programmes and we’re delivering our programmes on their land, so in partnership. So I think it’s it’s that being a small fish in a big pond, but actually making friends with lots of other fish and sort of, you know, having bigger impact because we’re serving them, but they serving us and it’s got a lovely balance to it.

So that’s on the environmental side. And then on the social side, I would say we’ve we’ve I’ve always sort of tried to think of ourselves as entrepreneurial. So we’ve responded to social need during COVID. We we developed a whole range of services that came out of a hat with little pink rabbit in the middle because it was about how did we support those services who were working in crisis, the police, the NHS, we were offering free therapy to those service deliverers to say, How can we help you?

And then we ran online counselling, which we would never do. We said we would disconnect to reconnect. But during during COVID, we, we offered our services to as many people as we could in a way that they could grab help and and then we started to look at crises within the society anxiety, social anxiety, domestic violence. And now we’ve kind of been an adaptive charity to say, how do we help those people who are coming out of probably one of the biggest crisis well, the biggest crisis faced globally, and how do we position ourselves that nature suddenly became a place people could find refuge in, But it’s tied into our therapy services and we’ve just been able to make lemonade from lemons in the nicest possible way. But I think the domestic violence work has been incredibly powerful over these last couple of years because domestic violence in the UK rose 40% during COVID. Now we’ve got a cost of living crisis that drives families to the brink, where all these kind of underlying issues bubble out.

So how we positioning ourselves to support more people that way. So, you know, I think that kind of work makes me feel like we we try really hard to be on the right page for people and on the right page for nature. And so that’s, I think the project really our turn around after the blossom, you know, they all serving a need for people in the rewilding and the education is serving a need for nature.

Jason
Isn’t just that it sounds like you’ve had to say a lot have a lot of difficult conversations about what it is you stand for and what it means to you having to react to with regards to how things have changed so much. I mean, to be working an outdoor kind of therapy and wilderness focussed charity during lockdown is difficult. I’m imagining it was like, what’s left?

Like, where do you go with what you can do as a service and to help people. But I’m also interested to know, how do you get those partnerships to work are you knocking on doors? Are you going to events? How do you find people to partner with? And that has been so successful over the last few years?

Jo
Well, I think we’ve built a really solid reputation. Even though we’re a medium sized charity with small to medium, we’re not a big hitter, but I think we’ve built a very solid reputation. We’re very focussed on quality and we’re very focussed on research and monitoring and evaluation. So I think we’ve been very rigorous in being able to deliver quality and I’d fight tooth and nail with our team to maintain that and but I believe that we somehow I believe in bluebirds of happiness, it sounds like a very un-businesslike approach to the world, but good things happen to us and I don’t quite know how else to explain that.

So good things happen to us. So, you know, it’s word of mouth. It’s somebody who’s found something on the Internet about you who wants to come and talk to you about something. It’s it seems to be interpersonal and digital and luck a lot of the time, which is not a business proposition. But I think if you build a good product, it has a magnetic effect for others who want to be part of that journey.

So I think partnerships need careful management. I think they need nurturing their needs and but they need a very rigorous approach to really good contracts, really difficult conversations upfront, making sure that you’ve looked at how you will manage any conflict, how you will manage anything that might not work. So we’ve got amazing relationships with our partners in terms of monthly meetings, checking in, how’s everything going? It needs excellent communication on a regular basis and trust, but.

Jason
That’s interesting that there is just an element of like if you do enough of the good things, well, you will get the rewards. And we have to find this with marketing. It’s like which part of our marketing is doing the work? It’s like we don’t really know. You just have to do as many of the bits you think will do the right thing and just eventually will play out.

You can’t just do the one thing that will work and get those results. And similarly, how like, how do you get people to your website like where do most of the people come from? Is it through campaigns or is it do you have any like kind of digital campaigns as well that get people to go and like find out about you?

Jo
Or is that something else? So, I mean, I’ve got an amazing marketing officer, Clare Martin, so she’s very good on the digital side, so is Terry, our educational side, I think I’m a little bit old fashioned about this, even though I’ve gone on digital training workshops. If I don’t, if I don’t do things all the time, I forget. So I’ll go to training and then I don’t do anything for a month and then I kind of go, whoopsie, I can’t quite remember which button to press.

So I do have to claim that I am a bit digitally challenged, which is not something I should be proud of and I’m not proud of it. I try hard that I’ve got a team of people who are really good. So Clare, for example, we’ve been doing funding. We get funding from kind of matched funding opportunities like the Big Give, which is all digitally run.

And so she will be using social media and different kinds of campaign tools matched in with a partner who’s also matching that digital output. We’ve learnt quite hard that you want to try and ask other people to tag you in so you can benefit and piggyback with their their campaigns. During COVID, we were incredibly blessed. Another kind of opportunity came up as a kind of joint campaign, which we called Vitamin N, which had people from National Trust, wildlife trusts, different mental health charities, Jordan Cereal, etc., etc. And that was a major campaign to take nature to people who were locked in flats and unable to get out.

And that was a big learning curve because being a small medium charity, we could piggyback on larger organisations who had a much bigger reach. But Clare’s grown our digital impact from around I think we had about probably max 2000 people on it about three years ago and we’re now touching 10,000. So we are growing through that collaborative approach and we’re really good at saying will promote you.

So you know, you can’t ask people to do things that you’re not prepared to do yourself. So that’s how we work with all of our clients that come through in terms of the services we run. We will never ask you to climb that tree. We’ll never ask you to walk through that mud. We’re going to walk through it just the same as you.

So in our relationships, in our business side of the charity, we believe that we will we will honour what we ask you. We will do exactly the same. And I think that keeps a respectful, virtuous cycle that does does help each other.

Jason
Yeah, theres loads. I mean, those numbers are great from 2000 to 10000. It sounds like that growth is immense. There’s so many different routes to go through and it is just about making sure you pay back people because they know this is can be a small industry as well and you’ll meet them along the way. Do you do you focus a lot on the stories when you’re doing your marketing and getting people into understanding the mission and who you help and how do you manage to kind of leverage those stories?

Jo
I think that it’s it’s got to be stories, you know, no matter how clever we think we are digitally and technologically, you know, we are still human beings and we still are relationship driven. It’s in our DNA. And I think that compassion and helping people find a connection comes through storytelling. And I think that there’s a technique within digital and technological communications where you you’ve got to work really hard to keep the human emotional side engaged.

And case studies are the best way to do that. And certainly from my experience, case studies where you can talk about somebody who’s benefited or you can show what’s happened in a in a wildlife story will always touch the heartstrings of people. And I think we need that, you know, be driven by a very rational world. But actually, as a species, we’re very emotional and we mustn’t forget that we made up of all of these elements, not just one. So huge, huge case studies. I would recommend that all the time.

Jason
Yeah, I think that’s some really good summary of of what a lot of the charities we’ve spoken to have had. It’s like absolutely bringing out these stories and making sure you can talk about them at length because that’s what people really buy, is you can say what you’re trying to do, but what you’ve actually done and talk about real people, that’s what tends to make the difference.

I think that’s that’s a really good finishing point for segment one, where we get a chance to understand a little bit more about your work and your charity. You’ve been really you’ve got some great I love the analogies that my favourite thing there for. If you’ve got a section at the end called strategy analogy which sounds like you will be great at. The second part of this is, is the what we’re calling hook, line and sinker.

So we’ve got three statistics that I’m going to give you and you guys are going to have to tell me which one is the fake one, the slightly exaggerated or underrepresented one. So I’m going to bring this up on screen and I’m going to read out these statistics and these will all be on famous. Well, okay, let me share my screen.

Jo
What happens if I fail Jason in my tests?

Jason
Yeah, to be honest, I think actually the scores not to put the pressure on, but the schools have been pretty good so far. But if you can.

Jo
Get very good, I’m just perfectionist. Okay. Right.

Astra
I’m going in blind as well as said it. So good.

Jason
So let’s see. I haven’t seen these yet. I’ve fact I’ve checked them only for the for the test. I haven’t, I’ve tried not to read them so I’ll try and play along as well. Okay. So the first one is children spend 1.6 hours a day outside on average. Or is it that children spend 63% less time outdoors than their parents?

Oops, sorry, I’m taking place at and their parents did at their age such that children spend 63% less time outdoors than their parents did at their age or is it that the place in the UK where children spend the most time outdoors is London? Which of those is the fake fact?

Jo
Right. Oh, I think the London one is fake.

Astra
Yeah.

Jo
So you could be walking to school. So that would count as outdoors, wouldn’t it. Yeah. Tricky.

Astra
1.6 hours a day. Oh yes. Those children got a break for lunch don’t they. Which probably forms part of that I think. Yeah I think, I think London.

Jo
I think 63% time outdoors in their parents is correct. But also the 1.6 hours a day outside on average could be correct as well. There’s not a lot of time people spend outside and so the first time I think are true. That’s why London is my big one. But then, you know, if you walk to school, that’s okay up. But what is outdoors? Is it pounding the pavement or is it playing and the garden or going to the woods?

Jason
Tricky out. I would tend to be the second one looks the most likely to be true. This one seems low, but I wouldn’t be too surprised by it. Like that is probably the state that we’re in at the moment. And this is the UK obviously, so it rains a lot. Yeah, I reckon. I think I’d go with number three is the fact that two and it was so I think we should point out that is astonishing.

No 1.6 hours on average isn’t long is it? So yes, I would be interested to know actually if that includes lockdown figures which was mention up.

Jo
Yeah. Yeah. Actually what’s interesting is if you compared that with Swedish or Scandinavian children, where the climate is actually much harsher, you would find very different statistic of children spending time outdoors would be really interesting comparison. Yeah.

Jason
Yeah, definitely.

Jo
Anyway, sorry, but.

Jason
That’s the second section is so 2/5 of parents say technology is the main reason children play indoors in Manchester is the place where children have the highest screen time 2.8 hours a day. 41% of children have been told to stop playing outdoors by their parent or neighbours for being too loud.

Jo
Oh well, I think it’s really tricky. I’ve no idea about Manchester.

Jason
Yeah, I know, but why would we? Why? Why would more people.

Astra
Go and schools? I suppose it’s, it’s always quite rainy up North compared to down south. So perhaps there’s not a lot of playing time available. That would be my logical answer. Don’t you get ahead of things, do it. The readiness, availability of screens.

Jo
I mean, I’m a bit taken aback at 41% of children are being told to stop playing outside because most parents can’t wait for their children to go and do something.

Astra
Yeah, I agree. I think the sound of my mum ringing in my ears told me to get outside and.

Jo
I’m I would think that 41% of children playing outside, but I’d be very upset if that’s actually true. But I’d like to be delusional and purist and think that that’s the one that’s not true, but I don’t know that that’s true.

Astra
Yeah, I agree. I’ve got to say, I agree with you on that one, Jo. I think, number one, technology is probably the main reason people play indoors. I think the only reason I played outside is because there wasn’t much technology, although I might have had a different childhood. And then, yeah, I’m sticking with my theory of Manchester being grey and miserable. So screen time is the saviour. So I agree. 41%

Jo
You could maybe even have 4/5 parents saying that technology’s the main reason for children to play indoors

Jason
Yeah that’s what I, that’s why I think I think it’s going to be more people think blaming technology for the reason that children stay indoors. So I think top one is false because it’s more yeah so you’re going with the bottom one and I see.

Astra
Yeah I’m going to go with the bottom one too.

Jo
Now I’m sitting on the fence.

Jason
Oh we all lose.

Jo
Oh no. Okay.

Jason
Okay. So London is the place where London where children have the high screen time, not Manchester. And it is 2.8 hours a day. That’s interesting. Okay, so let’s let’s find out then. Children under 13 who frequently play outside also report good mental health, but just make sense. I can’t see that that would be false.

Astra
Just playing that once the true one.

Jason
Only 5% of children had access to outdoor learning in 2016. Interesting. And then the last one on this section is children who grew up with access to outdoor outdoor spaces do better in standardised tests. They’re all pretty difficult because I’d say the middle one for me, but I don’t know. What do you think? What does outdoor learning classes as well?

That’s interesting.

Jo
I think that I would go for the middle one. I think it might be higher than that, but it might be it might be a higher statistic percentage and I think 5% is a hang on that let me get this right. So I definitely think children who play outside may may have improved mental health. But I’m I can’t evidence that because I did lots of research into those children who grew up with access to arts spaces to bid on standardised tests I would think would be yes, only 5% of children had access to outdoor learning.

Astra
Unless it means like forest schools and such.

Jo
Because we also talking 2016. So rethinking now quite a long time ago and that’s cut a whole lot of outdoor education, all those outdoor learning centres in Birmingham for example, were closed down. They didn’t get funding. So I think, I’m not suer whether the first one might be wrong also had good mental health. I don’t know the question.

Astra
Yeah, I was, I was thinking perhaps the first one might be fake just because I think if you have any child under 13, how they would feeling about being outside outside they’d say whatever you wanted to hear so that they could continue to play outside. That’s my logic that children of Echo.

Jason
Okay, so you go first to the 21st.

Astra
Yeah.

Jason
And Joe said the first one, I think the.

Jo
First one, I think the first one.

Jason
I’m going to go with the second one.

Jo
Okay.

Jason
Okay. Oh, well, I suppose so. The top one does surprise me though, because you make a good point, but do keep every every child under 13 who frequently plays outside

Jo
I also know I mean, they could be they must be many neglect children here outdoors. Not yet. You know, why would they have great mental health if they’re not being nurtured indoors as well? So I don’t. But well done, Jason, you win.

Astra
Yeah you win.

Jason
Suspicious because I’ve got the questions, the answers here but I promise you guys didn’t see that and that’s I’ll let you introduce the segment three.

Jo
It’s fun. I’d love to put it through the staff team, that would be great. Yeah.

Astra
Yeah. Give it a go Yeah so, segment three is we’ve already touched on it. Strategy Analogy. So I’ll pull up a random word generator and then we have to come up with some kind of analogy and that links back to the stuff that we’ve been talking about today. So the random word is comfortable.

Jo
So we’ve got to come up with an analogy in our work. Just explain it to me a bit more. Sorry.

Astra
Yeah. So using the word comfortable, try and come up with an analogy for the stuff we’ve been talking about today. So it can be something around nonprofits that we need to do wilderness, specifically digital access, and we make it quite difficult one comfortable.

Jason
I think I’d like to start I very rarely start with this stuff because i find this stuff very difficult, but there was something that you raised earlier about how, I mean, you started with such a fantastic mission, which has a really simple and easy to understand reason for being in terms of getting young people outside and the attachment they have with nature.

But and it would have been easy just to stay comfortable with delivering that because it works and it provides value. But you didn’t. You took that and applied in so many different areas with different projects. And I think that is where you can find value and and be able to help in such a better way is when you take yourself into uncomfortable areas and you’ve dealt with uncomfortable times and situations and had to have probably uncomfortable discussions about is that really us?

Is that is that what we stand for? Well, yes. When the time comes, that is what we have to do because that’s where people are right now. They’re not out. We can’t take people out. So here’s what we’ve got to offer. So I think comfortable with a theme is is important in the sense that you shouldn’t be comfortable and you should always try and look for ways in which you can apply what you do. And in uncomfortable ways.

Jo
But what about.

Jason
Me summarised as well as that though.

Jo
But I think you’ve nailed that because I think, you know, we talk about the impact of wilderness immersion as being out of your comfort zone and if you’re not going to stretch, it’s up. You know, we do some work around in a panic stretch zones, you know, where is, where is, where are the where is the zone? And if we just stay in comfort, we never grow.

So we we do a lot of work, you know, metaphorically about about stretch zones, comfort zones, panic zones. But actually in running an organisation, I never want to be comfortable because if I get too comfortable, I’ve learned through hard experience, the minute I think things are going brilliantly. And you think you can sit back for a second, The next wave is going to suddenly come across the ocean and hit you.

So I think we need to stay a little bit on the edge, not in panic, but in stretch. And that’s being out of your comfort zone. So never be too comfortable.

Astra
Yeah. I think all I can do is expand what you two have already said in that initially you want to get people into the wilderness, which is out of their comfort zone, but also you kind of want them to get more comfortable in nature than necessarily being at home and being with people or in nature. So I’m just going to kind of piggyback on your guys’ there. That’s all I have got.

Jason
That was really good to catch up with you Jo. I’ve learnt a lot about The Wilderness Foundation, and I’ve learnt a lot about you and the work that you guys do. As always, we leave an open space here just to allow the guests to kind of talk about something that they would like to bring some attention to or particular project you’re running or could be a particular something that needs donations

So here is, here is the chance to speak to our audience, take it away.

Jo
Yeah, I mean, I think that we’re living in interesting times, as we all know. I think that we need to as an organisation, I think one of our big challenges is to to kind of grow but not grow so fast that we lose our quality. And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges that any organisation or business faces.

So, you know, while we can look so great at the growth of our delivery programmes and what we’re doing, it comes at a big consequence on staff in terms of energy and you’ve got to watch burn out. And also the fact that our work is work that deals with lot of traumatised people. So you know, I’ve actually sat at my desk once and burst into tears reading a referral form and gone home with a really heavy heart.

And so we all need to be humble in asking for help. But I think that one of the challenges with growth is how do we protect what we’ve got while we actually grow and make sure that we’ve kind of thought through that risk management side of things. So I talked to some of the other that dynamic, our risk pack.

You know, let’s not talk about risk, but actually we need to be very measured. We need to be excited and creative and entrepreneurial, but we’ve also got to stay grounded and to think, okay, that sounds fantastic, but what is the risk to that? And I’m very lucky because I am the kind of, Well, let’s do that. That’s fantastic.

If it was left to me, I would take on I mean, I take on too much anyway, because it’s my nature, because I’m so excited about life. But I’ve got some very good team members, the more risk averse team members who go, actually, that’s not. Thank you very much for coming up with that great idea. But let’s think of the consequences.

So I’m a firm believer in, you know, many minds make good work, not just many hands. And it’s kind of you need to rely on each other and use each other’s skill sets and use each other’s strengths to kind of come out the other end with the best product. So you, know, while we are growing, while the world is crazy, while we having to be entrepreneurial,

Why do we want to be quick thinking and and reflexive? We have to stay grounded and our work is about being grounded and it is about keeping our feet on the ground and being practical and thinking it through. So I don’t know if that’s of any value to anybody else. But I think just to kind of in our work, we try and stay balanced between nature and people.

I think we trying to be entrepreneurial and creative while we stay grounded and I think it’s just continually trying to seek balance is the way forward.

Jason
Wow. That was fantastic.

Astra
What a fantastic sentiment to end on.

Jason
Yeah, fantastic. And then I really can’t top that. I think it’s been really, really good to have you on, Jo and we’ll include links to your website and some of the projects in the show notes as well. And thank you for joining us today.

Jo
Well, thank you. And I do put you in the bluebird of happiness flying through the window crowd. So I think we we have to get people like Blue Peter badges, but a little bit of happiness badges. So thank you for inviting me on.

Jason
Oh, no problem.

Jo
Take care.

Jason
Cheers, thank you. Bye

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