LOVE HER WILD OUTDOOR ACADEMY

Encouraging Women To Be Outdoor Beginners And Leaders

100 miles is a long way to drive when your head is buzzing with ideas! Before I’d even unpacked, I furiously typed up my ideas on my laptop before they escaped my brain! This was the beginning of Love Her Wild’s (LHW) Outdoor Academy.

I’d just returned from the first ever Love Her Wild leaders’ weekend –two days of sharing reflections, ideas, training and fun with the other amazing women who look after the local groups of this inclusive women’s outdoors community. One of the common challenges the leaders had identified was supporting women to have the confidence and skills to regularly take part in outdoor adventures, of any shape or size. We all shared stories of members confiding that they “lurk” on social media, watching others have adventures, whilst feeling they themselves are not fit/fast/brave/skilled enough.

There is still an enduring perception of the outdoors as an extreme, competitive place which requires fitness, expensive travel, kit or expertise. Women in particular find this challenging and the 2021 LHW survey showed that, sadly, they are not always made to feel welcome. Yet we know the huge benefits access to the outdoors offers in terms of wellbeing, social and emotional learning, and environmental awareness to name just a few.

We’ve tried various ways to support and encourage new members to take their first steps in the community, from new members events, online Q&A sessions, social media welcome posts and beginner navigation sessions. But leaving the leader weekend with new ideas, enthusiasm and energy convinced me that there was another method we could try. Why couldn’t we offer a similar weekend of outdoor learning tailored to give our outdoor beginners the skills and confidence to make the outdoors (and our LHW community) part of their lives?! Several months of grant applications and planning later, Outdoor Academy is ready to launch in April 2023!

What will Outdoor Academy look like?

Outdoor Academy is designed to be a beginners guide to the everyday outdoors! 15 team members will be selected through an application process to join the fully-funded weekend. It will be packed with outdoor learning workshops, activities and discussions to build outdoor confidence and skills from scratch. It’s important we hear what the team

AUTHOR Siân Brewer

Siân has worked on National Park Youth Voice projects, teaching with outdoor educational charities, training Ten Tors teams and running Discover Your Outdoors as a sole trader. She became involved with Love Her Wild whilst working towards becoming an Accredited Practitioner of the IOL.

members feel they need from the workshops to achieve this - so we’ve asked them in the application form. Ideas so far include the often-overlooked basics of what to wear, where to go and what to do when you’re there. Our previous experience in the community has also suggested workshops on overcoming confidence barriers, navigation, leave no trace and camping skills.

We are determined that the event will have a lasting impact and a wider reach than just the 15 attendees. All workshops will be designed to have ‘to do’ actions so team members can get outdoors locally. We hope they will be inspired and empowered to explore their local areas, take their families and friends outdoors more, join local LHW events, book outdoor skills courses and plan outdoor adventures. Day two of Outdoor Academy will be dedicated to creating opportunities for inspiring the 26k strong LHW community. Again, we would like team members to shape what this looks like, and ideas so far include arranging local meet ups, creating videos, how to guides and diaries.

Over the coming issues I will be reporting back on the progress of Outdoor Academy, the challenges that unfold, its impacts, learning and how Outdoor Academy has helped the professional development of the leadership team. Stay tuned! p

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