Veterans Outdoors, a unique charity offering outdoor wellbeing activities, friendship and support to forces’ veterans, and constantly expanding its range of activities for former Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel this spring, thanks to significant funding from the RNRMC.
Based in the South West of England, an area with one of the highest concentrations of veterans in the UK, the charity offers horticultural therapy sessions and courses as well as leisure and adventure activities in safe, supportive environments.
The activities provided by Veterans Outdoors prove lifechanging to Royal Navy veterans like Kat, who struggle with mental health.
Kat is a Royal Navy Veteran in her thirties. She is a single mother of a 7-year-old boy. Kat joined Veterans Outdoors in May 2022, after seeing our Women’s Only group ARTEMIS advertised on Facebook.
Kat explained to the Veteran's Outdoors team how she had become riddled with anxiety which had become worse as ‘Covid’ continued. As a result of the anxiety, Kat had become more and more socially isolated to the point where she was only leaving the house to go to work and take her son to school/outings. Kat never did anything for herself and was stuck in a rut.
Her mood was deteriorating to the point of despair, but she assumed everyone was in a similar position due to what was going on in the world, so continued to struggle independently.
After discussion with the VO team, it became apparent that Kat had lost her identity and confidence which led her to feel hopeless and worthless, Kat was desperate to get her spark for life back for the benefit of her son.
With thanks to RNRMC and the funding they gave to Veterans Outdoors, we were able to work with Kat to discover her needs and offer her a programme of events to ‘find herself again’.
Veterans Outdoors
Veterans Outdoors created a bespoke programme of events and activities for Kat, which helped her acknowledge her isolation and made her realise that spending time with others relieved her sense of loneliness and having to cope alone, which evoked a feeling of empowerment and motivation. Having the variety of activities enabled Kat to experience new things and learn new skills; from practical things like yoga poses and tying knots to keep a raft afloat to having more confidence and self-belief to chase her dreams and make new friends.
As a result of engaging with VO events Kat was able to highlight her personal values and strengths and started to use them to her advantage. As the summer passed Kat joined another women's group and went sailing for a few days where she was part of the working crew, she took her son up on the moors and camped with him to show what she had learned- (fire lighting, putting up tents, and even cooking over a campfire).
Kat now has a new job and used her newfound hobbies, skills and interests to bolster up her CV to secure an interview. Kat talks very highly of Artemis (VO) and feels like it “saved her from the darkest depths”. 
[Veterans Outdoors] has helped me to put perspective on current situations in my life, I have been grateful for the opportunity and would recommend to anyone requiring help!
Kat
