Our CRCC funded 'This Gran Can' sessions have been a great success although our name needs some work 😉
In February of 2022 we were awarded a £1000 grant from CRCC (Cornwall Rural Community Charity) to set up a mental wellbeing support group for woman aged 40+ in Mevagissey. We decided to replicate our successful multi-activity model that we already use with our ‘This Girl Can’ and ‘Outdoor Adventurers’ clubs but invite older women to come and play instead. Why should the kids have all the fun??
We launched our group on social media and set up a private ‘This Gran Can’ facebook group and within 2 weeks of starting, we had over 70 members from Mevagissey and surrounding areas! We organised a get together at the Mevagissey Activity Centre early in June to try and find out what our members wanted to try and activities ranged from cricket and netball to sea swimming and paddleboarding.
Our first session was an Introduction to Sea Swimming session at Portmellon and we had a glorious sunny morning for it and over 20 women came down. We lent a few wetsuits and showed everyone how to use a tow float to keep themselves safe. Some of our women had not worn a wetsuit before or even been swimming in the sea. Everyone had a great time and we then set up a social swimming whatsapp group so that group members could meet outside of our organised sessions.
Other successful sessions were cricket with the wonderful Nick from St Austell Cricket Club, Silent Disco Beach Yoga with Sophie from Bodmin Yoga, gig rowing with Mevagissey Gig Rowing Club, kayaking and bushcraft with Chris and Kathy from WWW, and we finished on a popular autumnal kayak and paddleboarding session on 14th October. A special thanks goes out to Chrys of The Paddleshed for giving us a massive discount on her paddleboards and kayaks and to Martin and his team from Mevagissey Rowing Club who volunteered their time and gigs for us to try their awesome sport.
We collected data to assess the success of our ‘This Woman Can’ group and we are really pleased with how it was received. The infographics above created by Izzie are awesome and show some of the wonderful things that came out from our sessions. Two of the take-outs for me were that this has been a support group for what one of our women considered to be a ‘forgotten group of women’, and that putting by yourself and trying something new really can lead to meeting new friends and finding new interests and hobbies. The Mevagissey Gig Rowing Club have gained a couple of new oarswomen and cricket was a surprising hit. These women really can!!
We are now looking for further funding to support our ‘This Woman Can’ group but in the meantime we are planning on running some pay-as-you-go activities through the Winter so do get in touch if there is anything in particular you would like us to arrange and/or if you would like to join our online community.
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