Light The Way March 2025
Sunset Walk
Around 40 people, some coming from as far as Chesterfield, arrived in hope that mother nature wouldn’t disappoint for our 2nd ‘’Light the way’’ walk, this time to view a sunset.
Unfortunately the weather took a turn with very high winds and a full sky of cloud, making it so our original plan had to be revised.
Luckily for us, we have the phenomenal qualified walk leader Laura who quicky went to work on creating a new shorter walk, so everyone could still enjoy the day.
And so off we set with everyone in good spirit and looking forward to the experience.
We didn’t get to see a sunset however, due to the generosity of The Bear Alderwasley in allowing us to use one of their function rooms to meet afterwards for a social, everyone came together and we all got to speak to some incredible please from all walks of life.
Originally both the Light the way walks we have run were designed to raise funds for the Young Futures Programme at AGS, and that we have done.
However, the bigger story is the impact a event like this has on improving someone’s mental wellbeing through meeting new people and being out in nature doing something different.
This is now the story of Light the way and WMHI, something we are all proud to be involved with.
Thank you to everyone involved, it was another walk we won’t forget.
For more information on The Wirksworth Mental Health Initiative and how you could get involved, please visit our website at www.wirksworthmhi.co.uk or email us at wirksworthmhi@yahoo.com
WMHI Wellbeing Gardening Morning
9th March 2025
On what was a glorious early spring morning, a small team of local volunteers came together at to support Wirksworth junior School and Wirksworth Mental Health Initiative in their gardening event.
Everyone got to work under the bright blue skies in small teams to help bring the grounds of Wirksworth junior school back to life.
Over the 2 hours, with a mandatory tea and biscuit break, the teams removed large amounts of weeds, planted bulbs, added to the existing willow tunnel and started work on a new area of dead hedging.
A few tired limbs by the end of what was a fantastic social morning, getting to meet new people and coming together to improve all of our mental health and general wellbeing.
Conversations are being had about making this a more regular thing, so watch this space.
Thank you to everyone involved in this fantastic morning and we hope to see you again at future events.
Peak Ballet Raises Over £600 For WMHI
On Sunday 8th December, under the struggles of storm Darragh, Lara Ross of Peak Ballet put on 2 shows at the Robert Ludlam Theatre at St Benedict’s School, Derby.
Showcasing the young dancers of Peak Ballet, Lara, after joining WMHI this year, offered to donate all funds raised from the show raffle to WMHI.
Everyone was in shock when they realised that over £600 had been raised, an incredible achievement for a single event.
This money will help us in our startup year and beyond to provide mental health signposting support for our communities.
WMHI can now start planning for the future with new ways to support the community, through events, workshops and many other opportunities that will come our way and are working on currently.
If you feel you would like to support WMHI in any way, either through a fundraising event, promotion of our group or even joining us as a volunteer member or club/group, please contact us at Wirksworthmhi@yahoo.com for more information.
WMHI can’t thank Lara and all associated with Peak Ballet enough for their incredible support shown to us.
Darren Greatorex
WMHI Chair
''Just A Thought''
6 Months On
Today I woke up, like any other day, and realised it was June 1st.
My original thought was, "how can it be June already?" but then it hit me.
I realised that today is 6 months exactly since the day after a mental health launch within Wirksworth football, the day i believed WMHI could exist.
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At this point we had nothing, just a thought and a room full of some very enthusiastic people.
''What would it look like, what would we do?'
All thoughts rolling around my head.
6 months later and we have 6 clubs involved, with more in the pipeline, 13 working members with more to come, we have taken a total of 45 mental health courses, including 6 trained Mental Health First Aiders.
Our committee is formed, as are all our policies and commitments to help us make the best of this.
Our website and social media channels are growing at an incredible rate and there are so so many local organisations that want to work with us.
Plans are being made for the future, which we can wait to tell everyone about.
I personally feel privileged to be working with everyone involved and look forward to what we can achieve together.
Thank you everyone that has been a part of an incredible 6 months so far.
Darren (WMHI Founder & Chair)
WMHI At The Wirksworth Carnival 2024
The Carnival weekend returned to Wirksworth this bank holiday and with it, came the traditional well dressings.
Anthony Gell School decided that their beneficiary of the donations this year would be the Wirksworth Mental Health Initiative.
And so they set to, tasking their year 7 students with the challenge of designing the well for us, incorporating our logo.
They was certainly up to the task and one student created what many said was "the best well in town", we believe they was right.
Members of WMHI along with other volunteers stood by the well over the weekend in all types of weather, explaining the design, giving out our information leaflets and taking donations.
Our thanks go to everyone involved at Anthony Gell School and the volunteers for making this magic happen.
From everyone at WMHI.
THANK YOU!
WMHI is official.
On the evening of Thursday 21st March 2024, members from many local groups and clubs came together to from what is now officially the Wirksworth Mental Health Initiative.
Members of Wirksworth Colt FC, Wirksworth Scouts, Wirksworth & Middleton Cricket, Young Futures Program and Members of the public put in place the foundation for what we hope will become a umbrella for mental health support in our community.
With a little more work in the background we will start to share our support wider, raise funds for local mental health causes and promote mental health support far and wide.
We will continue to provide mental health training for those involved to stregthen what is already an incredible set of volunteers.
If you would like to know more, subscribe to our news letter or become part of one of our teams, please get in touch at wirksworthmhi@yahoo.com for more information.
Or, if you would like to sponsor us or make a donation, again please get in touch.
The future for our communities mental health looks more promising.
Many thanks also to Hannage brook medical centre, Erewash voluntary action, Wirksworth town & Ivanhoe, Tough enough to care and Derwent hockey for your support in makeing this happen.
