Rose Marie Gare-Simmons, mental health nurse

“It’s a time to feed our communities with kindness”

Over the past few months I’ve seen first-hand the significant effects of social isolation and the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s mental wellbeing.

These negative effects have affected us all. We have all, in our own ways, faced disruption to our lives, and difficult and daunting challenges. For most of us, these have been very worrying times; fear for our own health, that of our loved ones and the most vulnerable in our society, along with worries about disrupted education, income and employment. 

The lockdown has placed lots of restrictions on us at a time of increased stress and anxiety. With this added lack of activity and distraction, plus the loss of social contact and outdoor availability, stress and anxieties are left to escalate.

It is imperative, now more than ever, that we safeguard our mental health. We need to build on and strengthen our mental resilience. In times like these we all have a responsibility to do what we can for the collective good. To come together, look after ourselves, and look after each other. It’s a time to feed our communities with kindness, support and good deeds.

My partner Scott, a qualified Mountain Leader and NNAS approved navigation tutor, asked me some weeks ago: “How can we help?”. After some discussions we decided to create an outdoor navigation paper that people could complete at home. This was a perfect solution and meant that Scott could continue doing what he loves (teaching navigation), while promoting the outdoors and hill safety during the lockdown. Scott has spent tireless hours putting the course together and building the modules for the home-study course. Since going live with the course, our time has been filled with answering emails, sending out modules to subscribers and supporting the people enrolled when they’ve required extra guidance. 

We created this course to spread some positivity and to support people’s mental wellbeing. We wanted this to be available to all and so decided from the start there would be no charge for it ffor the duration of the government lockdown.

We’ve had such an overwhelming response. The thanks and gratitude shown from students has been heart-warming, and we’ve been lucky to be able to provide people with activity and learning to productively occupy their time. It’s a distraction from any worries and we’ve hopefully gifted people a future of adventure and exploration in the great outdoors. To us that is priceless.

To download NavTrek’s home navigation course, or book on to one of their outdoor navigation courses, go to navtrek.org