Giving Something Back

Here at The Outdoors Group, one of our core values is to ‘build an awesome community’. This is something that has been an absolute cornerstone of who we are and what we believe in, right from our humble beginnings in 2011. We believe in collaboration, over competition, and love it when an opportunity presents itself that means we can be an active part of our local community. 

One such occasion arose recently, when we had the chance to work with Ductu, an organisation that aims to connect schools to national employers in order to ‘challenge stereotypical thinking and raise aspirations.’ They believe in a level playing field for all young people and facilitate work experience for ‘disadvantaged and disabled students in all corners of the UK and beyond.’ 

They acted as an intermediary between us and Devon Careers and Enterprise Hub, and the result was that on Thursday, we were able to provide a ‘workplace’ experience for a group of 6 year 10 learners from a local alternative provision school at our Crediton site. The goal was to give them an insight into what it’s like to work in both learner facing roles and behind the scenes at The Outdoors Group.

They started the visit by learning about health and safety from Health and Safety Officer, Liz Taylor. Once they’d had a chat, they had a tour of the site in which they looked for potential hazards. Then it was on to find out what a tutor does at The Outdoors School and one of our tutors, Emily Woolls was on hand to tell them all about her role and what a typical day looks like at the school. The learners were particularly interested in how we provide a hot meal every day and that our learners plan the menu, find recipes, go shopping for the ingredients and then prepare the meal on the fire pit. 

Finally, the group sat down with Alex Cook (one of our Estate Rangers) to talk about the work he does as part of the Estates team. One learner was particularly interested in diggers and is thinking of going to Bicton College. Alex chatted to him about that pathway and where having a digger ticket can lead. Another of the learners expressed an interested in bricklaying which naturally led onto a conversation about our fire pits (made out of concrete blocks and fire bricks) before the whole group had a conversation about construction and carpentry and Alex spoke to them about making our compost toilets and learner bases. Lots of questions were asked and they really engaged with this portion of the visit particularly. 

It was such a pleasure to be able to work with these local organisations and a nearby school to facilitate this visit and at least from our side, it seemed to be a fantastic success! As well as tying into our ethos around community, this was also a great way for us to ‘walk the walk’ in terms of being a responsible, inclusive employer. 

We aim for The Outdoors Group to be a brilliant place to work and an environment that is accessible to anyone who shares our passion for what we do, regardless of what grades they got in school or their learning style. Diversity and variety is what makes our team so brilliant – everyone has a part to play, everyone can have a role in working to achieve our mission and if everyone approached their work the same way, we wouldn’t have the innovation and creativity that makes us who we are.

So we were so proud (and pleased) to take part in this visit and hope to get involved with plenty more in the future – perhaps we’ll see one of those learners back again working for us in years to come!

Author: Hannah Durdin (with input from Beverley Garland, Carrie Sibbald & Alex Cook)

Date: Sunday 14th July 2024