Flourish in Nature – a legacy toolkit
Flourish in Nature is a Devon based project that was funded for 3 years by Sport England. It is run and managed by EDP Drug & Alcohol Services with support from Active Devon and the Devon Wildlife Trust. The project delivers a range of outdoor activities and trains those in active recovery to grow into activity leaders with all the skills and qualifications to match. The fact that leaders have lived experience as well as a passion for their chosen activity elevated every active event from something that simply aided health, wellbeing and environmental understanding (normally these would be seen to be a golden trio in their own right) into meaningful, accessible mutual aid opportunities.
Even now, with funding having come to an end, activities like walking, yoga, tennis, cycling and tai chi are still taking place across Devon, thanks to the project’s built-in sustainability. Flourish in Nature was designed around EDP’s values as well as the 5 ways to wellbeing and every part of it has benefited from these foundations. EDP take pride in focusing on what’s strong, not what’s wrong and recognising the incredible added value of lived experience. There is a positive approach to risk to enable people to grow at their own pace and all those involved worked ‘with’ rather than ‘for’ participants. By embracing all these factors, Flourish in Nature has become not only successful in terms of its recovery outcomes, but also a rare success story in its sustainability.
If you are thinking of setting up a project for people in recovery or who have additional needs in terms of accessing outdoor activities, take look at this invaluable toolkit before you go anywhere a funding application form!
