Welcombe Hills School MoveForward Project - Review
We enjoyed a successful community project for 15 individuals with mild to moderate learning difficulties from Welcombe Hills School in Stratford-Upon-Avon alongside ThinkForward.
Over the 11 weeks we put on horticultural and environmental sessions in a number of locations in Stratford to help the group strengthen their town links for further volunteering and work opportunities.
The sessions were also designed to improve their soft skills, communication, teamwork, independence and self-confidence, for which we saw a marked improvement in all these areas.
As a collective, they helped make a big impact in the local community with many practical activities completed to benefit people, places and the environment.
Their Impact in numbers:
300 spring bulbs planted including Daffodil, Bluebells, Snowdrops and Crocus to bring colour and beauty to Stratford hospital, The Dell and The Hideaway.
200 pollinator friendly plants planted to attract bees and butterflies.
100 kg of apples picked and donated back to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to get juiced and bottled to sell in the gift shops and raise money for their charity.
55 trees planted at our nature reserve in Snitterfield to create Hawthorn hedgerow and continue the forest area. As the trees grow, they will trap carbon to help fight climate change and they will build biodiversity as they provide habitats for a number of birds, insects and animals.
50 pots of propagated Sedum planted to grow for future living walls.
10 bin bags of litter collected and recycled to improving the cleanliness of the community.
8 fence panels painted in the kitchen garden to bring the fence back to life.
4 memorial benches refurbished that had been damaged and weathered over the years to go in the hospital gardens for staff and patients to enjoy.
4 gardens maintained within the local community by regularly watering, weeding, planting, mowing, strimming and pruning.
3 Living walls installed and planted to create greenery and colour in urban settings.
2 fruit tree guilds created in our orchard area to grow edibles around an apple and pear tree.
1 biodiversity audit conducted to collect data on what animals, insects, plants and trees could be found on site.
