LIFE BEYOND THE MILITARY – OUTDOORS

SUMMER 2020

WELCOME TO OUR SUMMER NEWSLETTER

FRIENDS OF HIGHGROUND

FHG is the voluntary arm of HighGround which supports and promotes the work of the Charity with fundraising and community awareness initiatives, both locally and nationally.

Like all charities, our fundraising has been curtailed by C-19 but we are using this unwelcome hiatus to plan Autumn events, and develop our Regional Champions network.

In the meantime, Chris Eberhardie one of our Steering Group is doing the 1,000 Mile Challenge – in her garden..! You can support her here. as she gets fit, stays sane, and raises precious funding for HighGround. She’s aiming to complete her first 100 miles by VJ Day – we salute you Chris!

STANFORD HALL

Andy and Jane’s adaptations in the early days of lockdown included making lots of ‘how to’ videos for the Occupational Therapists whose patients remained at Stanford Hall and our You Tube channel came in very handy...

Once Andy was able to return to the Unit he could set up Horticultural Therapy sessions for Jane to deliver remotely, and the gardening year was able to continue while the first CV-19 patients arrived for their rehab with the focus on fatigue management and pacing.

We miss our Gardening Volunteers a lot but some of the Neuro group planted our pumpkins for Halloween out in the raised beds in the Pears Walled Garden last week, so plenty to look forward to as Mother Nature keeps us all grounded in these wobbly times..

Planting out the pumpkins for Halloween. Andy’s socially distanced visit to Kirkby in Ashfield.

Andy’s new role which will take him offsite once a week to promote the therapeutic benefits of Horticulture within other military units and Veterans’ Breakfast Clubs took him to Kirkby in Ashfield for a socially distanced visit to their new allotment. He now has his own Twitter account where you can follow this vital work @HighGroundAndy.

The Friends of the Tenth memorial is looking good; you can read their latest newsletter here. Friends of the Tenth Memorial.

RURAL WEEKS

As we couldn’t run our Spring Rural Weeks programme at Bicton, we decided to run Virtual Rural Weeks over the summer and the response has been fantastic.

Before we said goodbye to Jemma, she analysed Professor Zoe Morrison’s pre and post-Rural Week questionnaires from 2019.

We are always learning and improving, but it’s great to be able to share the results with our funders and speakers and presenters whose precious contributions make Rural Weeks possible. A full version of the analysis is available on request:

In 2019 8 Rural Weeks were successfully delivered at Bicton College to 62 HighGrounders.

• 45% serving. 55% veterans. 23% officers.
• 89% agreed or strongly agreed the Rural Week had developed their interest in land-based employment.
• 94% agreed or strongly agreed their objectives for the week were achieved.
• 83% agreed or strongly agreed the Rural Week had helped them to plan their future outside HM armed forces.
• 78% felt ready to take on a new employment challenge by the end of the Rural Week.

Feedback from attendees:

I am a Transport Manager in the Royal Marines and it would be easy to go into that role in civvy street. If it hadn’t been for HighGround, that’s what I would have done.

Great course, great people and helped me enormously with my self-confidence.

100% would recommend it to others.

HORSEFERRY ROAD

The Development Board met via Zoom on 1st June and we are delighted to welcome Tim Green and Simon West onto the Board.

Tim is helping to drive our corporate engagement strategy and Simon will represent Gamekeeping and Countrysports. You can read about them here.

FUNDRAISING

We thank all the grant-making trusts who generously continue to fund our work in these uncertain times including the RAF Benevolent Fund, the Soldiers’ Charity, Finnis Scott Foundation, Worshipful Company of Drapers, the Armed Forces Covenant Fund, Worshipful Company of Grocers and the Veterans’ Foundation.

Once the Regional Champions are all in place, we hope to bring you news of events in your area where you can join them in supporting HighGround to deliver Life beyond the military – Outdoors.

GOOD NEWS

We salute all our HighGrounders as they move forwards and into land-based employment and you can read some of their stories here.

GDPR AND OUR STANDARDS

GDPR came into effect on 25th May 2018. We had an extremely busy run up to this date, but our small team were able to pull out all the stops and get things in place in time. As a charity we take GDPR and the security of your information very seriously. To this end, we have ensured that all of our data processors comply rigorously to keep everything secure. You can read about our Standards here.

Thank you for reading and please do share this email with anybody you think may be interested in supporting HighGround or who may be in need of our support.