Heartwood Community Woodland Group is a woodland management group consisting completely of volunteers. At Heartwood we have a vision to be “the voluntary workforce of choice for woodland management in the National Forest”. We have just celebrated ten years since the Group formed, which became a Community Interest Company (CIC) in 2021, and it solely exists to benefit the local community.
The 2024 Volunteers’ Week is celebrating both 40 years of Volunteers’ Week and of volunteering, so it is a great opportunity for us to reflect on the volunteers who help make Heartwood what it is. Our volunteers range from those who formally run the CIC, organising the woodland management activities and craft events at the woodland-based HQ through to those who come along to participate in looking after the woodland and making sustainable products from the resulting timber.
Last year we wanted to understand a little more about what our volunteers got out from taking part, so undertook an informal research project to gather feedback. That helped us to identify some key themes of what our volunteers take from helping at Heartwood and the links to mental wellbeing benefits.
On the social side, our team leaders and management team work hard to make the group as inclusive and welcoming as possible, which was reflected in the feedback. This means a lot of volunteering effort behind the scenes from a small, dedicated group who do all the administration and organising. One key part of this is an up-to-date website and a monthly newsletter which help keep all the volunteers informed and aware of opportunities to help. At the activities and events everyone joins in, irrespective of skill or knowledge level, which provides the opportunities for learning new skills and helping each other. Where someone is learning a new skill or trying something out we take a coaching approach, allowing them to try with the support of someone who has more experience. We have found this coaching approach supports our volunteers, helps foster a sense of achievement and makes them feel valued (which they all are!). Our aim is that everyone gains a sense of fulfilment at the end of a woodland or craft session.
Such social elements of volunteering have links to mental wellbeing. The connection with others fosters positive emotions and working towards a common goal with other volunteers, such as managing a piece of woodland, can boost self-esteem and how we feel towards ourselves. Working together can create shared experiences and memories which help foster and strengthen connections across volunteers. Learning new skills through a coaching approach can help with motivation and engagement of volunteers, while also supporting their self-confidence and self-efficacy, the belief in themselves to complete a task.
Our volunteers don’t just connect with others, through their work they also connect with nature. The activities and events at Heartwood provide a motivation to be outside, even when the weather is not so good and after a woodland management session volunteers may feel physically tired, but they also feel many positive emotions. Through the woodland sessions the volunteers learn about the management of natural habitats, how the actions taken today help maintain the woods for the future, alongside supporting wildlife through activities such as putting up bird boxes. By noticing the nature around them and actively engaging with it across the seasons the volunteers form a sense of attachment to and stewardship of the woodland areas they look after on behalf of the community, which they feel proud to do.
Nature connection has also been found to provide wellbeing benefits, including the sense of restoration that a natural environment can provide away from the busyness and worries of daily life. Exposure to more biodiverse areas, such as woodlands, has links to providing greater wellbeing benefits than urban based nature spaces. Working in the woodland can be hard at times, however being in a natural environment has links to lowering stress levels and fostering more activation of the “rest” part of our nervous system, as opposed to the “fight or flight” part. Feeling part of the woodland, through a caring attachment to it can also support the self-identity as a volunteer, with its associated positive emotions.
So in Volunteers’ Week we are celebrating all of our volunteers. They do a lot to help local communities by maintaining the woodland areas and sharing in craft activities with schools and groups like the WI. Alongside this important engagement with the community, it’s lovely that our volunteers find benefits to their wellbeing through being part of Heartwood, by connecting with others and with the natural environment.