Wild Work Programme of Events Begins

It feels like the Veri team are expectant mothers this week, after 9 months of nurturing creativity, digitally enabling our ecology team all on our Veri platform , developing online content and working on VR elements, the Wild Work project arrives in Cavan and West Limerick this week,  and to its original home Cork in a few weeks.

Our role has been to lead the project as a solutions provider for data driven programmes.  We have a team of a dozen people ensuring all communications and KPI’s are tracked and measured to achieve the best outcomes for the over 400 volunteers. With our ecology team under Dr. Amanda Greer we are bringing Irish place based learning into this new innovative blended programme.

Work Place Well Being

Work place well being is one of the key themes of the programme. Wild Work has developed important relationships with many businesses directly engaging with over 100 individuals in the business community.

“If you want to make your workplace a more vibrant, fun, enjoyable, healthy place to work, try and learn what nature you have at your premises and see what you can do to help it. Get your staff involved and the outcome will be that everyone will be much happier and more interested and excited in the place that they work”

William O’Halloran, Wild Work Team Leader

Our work with businesses aims to bring nature into the workplace by helping companies discover, protect and promote the biodiversity that can be found at their site. Encouraging nature and wildness at work is not only good for biodiversity, but for people too. By engaging staff through nature walks and talks, we show how nature can greatly benefit mental health and stress management.

“Rather than people sitting in offices, if people can go for a walk at lunchtime and have a bit of colour and diversity and learn something from that, then it will be very beneficial.”

 Dermot Kelly, Director Regulatory Affairs at Pfizer

The free, flexible, 12-week training programme will be delivered in 20 locations across South Cork, West Cork, West Limerick and Cavan, as an extension of the award-winning Wild Work not-for-profit biodiversity initiative first established by SECAD Partnership CLG in 2017.  It is hoped that, over time, it will be rolled out nationwide and will inspire other counties to create similar programmes for the benefit of both people and place.

“The Covid-19 global pandemic and Ireland’s commitment to the sustainable goals agreed at the recent COP26 UN Climate Change Conference have brought the wellbeing of both people and the environment back into sharp focus and so initiatives such as Wild Work have never been more important.“

As a team we are so privileged to transform and digitise the original Wild Work into the 2022 programme.

“Over its five-year history the Wild Work model of learning has already provided more than 200 education and awareness sessions, delivered 5,500 consultation hours, sown over 18,000 m of wildflowers, and developed more than 50 nature friendly landscaping projects.  This new training initiative represents a significant expansion of its work into counties Limerick and Cavan in a bid to engage more people in the important work of protecting, valuing and enhancing our flora, fauna and habitats for the benefit of our people, our communities and the places in which we all work and live.“

Already almost booked out, registrations for the free Wild Work Training Programme are open online at www.wildwork.ie.

No previous experience or qualifications are required to take part.