Wild Wonder and Wisdom CIC is a social enterprise that seeks to empower young people through outdoor education. Kathy King, the founder of WW&W is an experienced teacher of 20 years and a qualified outdoor instructor meaning that WW&W is able to offer indoor wall climbing, bushcraft, cycling, kayaking, canoeing, trail running, sea swimming, snorkelling and SUP as part of our outdoor education provision. We collaborate with lots of local, like-minded social enterprises so we can offer a varied menu of activities and sports.
We focus on boosting Emotional Literacy (self-confidence, self-belief, social skills, self-regulation and empathy) and have recently started to concentrate on ‘Momentary Happiness’ where we tune into how the physical activity combined with the natural blue and green spaces we are doing them in affects our mood. We try to capture our mood before, during and after our sessions. We hope that this mindful acknowledgment of how our moods change will start to condition participants to learn what natural spaces and what types of activities improve their mood the most.
We currently run four multi-activity after-school clubs aimed at 9-16 year olds; two 'Outdoor Adventure' clubs and two 'This Girl Can' clubs. We take a lot of referrals from St Austell Healthcare's 'Social Prescribing' team (almost 50%). We run weekly throughout the year during term-time, and add pop-up activities during the holidays.
WW&W are also delivering projects for other stakeholders including our 'Wild Camp Adventure Programme' for young women who are experiencing social anxiety, isolation or depression. We try to re-engage young people who are currently NEET (not in education, employment or training) or those at-risk of becoming so.
Grant support has so far come from the National Lottery Community Fund, Headstart Kernow, Cornwall Community Foundation, Groundworks/ Comic Relief, Cornwall Marine network and Active Cornwall. We have also run 2 successful crowdfunding campaigns.
