If I tell you that there is a group called Men Walking and Talking (MWAT), you’ll understand immediately what they do.
MWAT began as a weekly, hour-long mental health walk around Shrewsbury, giving men the chance to talk openly without pressure or judgment. This simple, brilliant idea naturally took off and new groups began to form across England and Wales. My husband set up their weekly walk in Macclesfield.
As we spoke about these walks, it was obvious that they help a lot of men to cope with their daily stresses and to build new friendships. It was also clear that the organisation (originally just a group of volunteers) was struggling to cope with its own success. Demand for local groups was huge, and local NHS prescribers wanted to include the MWAT walks in social prescribing. To grow further, MWAT had begun the process of transforming into a Community Interest Company (CIC). The group also needed watertight safeguarding and legal structures before it could take on NHS referrals.
Within Clarity I specialise in policy and process management, which overlapped neatly with what MWAT needed to grow with confidence and to accept referrals. Our Corporate Social Responsibility programme, which encourages Clarity employees to use their skills to support charitable causes, made it possible for me to support them. I applied for half a day of additional paid leave and applied my knowledge to their growing organisation. We call it gap analysis - what safeguarding policies, what procedures, what volunteer training did they have in place already, and where were the gaps in provision that they needed to fill? I was able to research and write an adult safeguarding policy and advise about complaints management. We also introduced MWAT to Combat Stress, a similar organisation supporting military veterans with PTSD.
From a personal perspective this work allowed me to support a worthy local group in its early stages, and to use my professional skills to benefit the local community. Professionally, it expanded my skillset, bringing my usual work into a new arena and serving an organisation which is allied to our own values. It allowed us to support mental health, a new local CIC and the wider policy of social prescribing. It was an ideal blend of my skills and their needs.
The national group is now a huge success story, with 19 local walks ranging from Plymouth to Penrith. It’s a great example of bottom-up, community-based action to improve mental health. I’m delighted to have been able to support MWAT to increase their impact on local communities.
