If we save only one life through this project it will still have been worthwhile.

Lives are lost because the waiting time for NHS counselling and talking therapies is too long and despite the healing power of nature and exercise, the option of outdoor mental health support is not offered. Only the privileged few can access private care, especially outdoor talking therapies, and receive help exactly when they need it.

We have personal and heartbreaking experience of what can happen when the wait is just too long but also of how walking in nature can be the most powerful of coping strategies; the time has come to do something.

We need outdoor counselling, we need shorter waiting times, we need peer-support walking groups and educational outreach projects to teach young people about using walking and nature as a coping strategy and we need it all now!

Trigs Official Collective CIC was formed in 2021 with the aim of providing this support and fundraising began. We originally wanted to take referrals from GP's for 2 pilot projects but it has proved impossible to get any practice to work with us; maybe due to how busy everyone has been with the pandemic; we can only speculate. We have had funds ready to disperse but to no avail which has been incredibly frustrating. Therefore, we are now working directly with an outdoor therapist to refer clients for funded therapy.

Our initial project is to fund outdoor therapy and peer support for as many people as we can fundraise for; hopefully proving just how beneficial outdoor therapy is. We then want to branch into walking groups and educational outreach projects within the next 5 years. By this point we hope GP and various social care sectors will take us more seriously and will start to refer people to us. We also want to start a program where therapists will volunteer to have one client per week free of charge for us; this would greatly increase how many people we can support. A volunteer peer support program is also something we aim to provide; maybe in the future even working with counselling education providers to provide student placements. Our dreams are big.

We aim to raise funds from generous and benevolent people, the private sector, and also from selling our own merchandise which you may have seen on our instagram feed.

Every penny donated will be used to support the mental health of people in desperate need and start a revolution in mental health support and education. Can you make this possible?