Mental Health Awareness Week

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and Wokingham Wellbeing Week, a week of national and local events for all ages that highlight and promote the importance of well-being in a variety of ways, across the community.

As a business that promotes positive mental and physical wellbeing within our team, it’s important that we do what we’re able to, to support these initiatives.

Here’s a quick run down of our most recent activities:

Raising money for Mind

I recently had the opportunity to raise sponsorship money for the mental health charity, Mind. Having taken part in Red January (an initiative to get people moving every day in the darker days of January), it inspired me to take up running as a way of personally improve my own mental health.

I set myself a target of completing Bracknell half marathon in under 2 hours on 12th May 2019. It was a big personal achievement to raise over £450 and finish in 1:57:30. I’d like to thank the 10 Degrees team, our clients, family and friends for their generous donations towards the cause.

Men don’t talk, do they?

As part of Wokingham Wellbeing Week, I attended a talk by Nick Wilson from Working Minds Matter. Nick shared his experience of struggling with mental health since rejoining civilian life after leaving the army. Nick’s struggle with PTSD led him on a journey of discovery about all aspects of mental health in men. The most poignant part of the event was how Nick got the room of attendees (not all men) to open up about their experiences. One particular gentlemen raised his concerns that employers were not doing enough to support their employees which led Nick to share how much value there is in businesses investing in the mental health of their employees.

This got me thinking about what else we should be doing to support our team, e.g. appointing mental health first aiders; providing a safe space to talk about issues without the out-dated stigma; and creating a mental health policy.

Promoting mental wellbeing

We know that we can always do more to support each other at 10 Degrees but we’re also proud of what we have done in this area. All members of our team are given the opportunity to have weekly 1-2-1s to discuss any work problems or personal matters, openly and confidentially.

We support each other when times are hard and are considerate of each other’s needs. With empathy and communication being two of our core values, it’s vital that we continue to promote these values as much internally as externally to our clients. But there will always be more that we can do to ensure a happy, healthy team.

New website for ARC counselling

We are excited to launch our latest charitable website for ARC counselling. ARC counselling are a fantastic local charity who provide counselling to schools and also offer services to young people and adults, including workplace support. ARC are volunteer led and depend on donations. We think ARC do amazing work in the community and some of our own staff have been grateful to receive ARC’s services themselves. With this in mind and our desire to contribute back to our community, we approached ARC to offer our own services.

We offered to update ARC’s existing website which was dated and not mobile responsive. We felt the site could be doing more to help them deliver their service, as well as be a better tool to help them raise valuable funds. With such a large proportion of ARC’s clientele being of a younger generation, a modern site that was simple to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and worked with their existing brand was required.

It was also important that the website supported ARC to continue its valuable work by adding a donate button which will allow for quick and easy donations to be made by anyone. ARC can now also advertise events on their website which will hopefully support any future fundraising. 34SP have been generous in providing free WordPress hosting for ARC, as they do for many UK registered charities.

We hope that our work on the ARC website will have a long term, positive impact on the local community. We also hope that you join us in celebrating Wokingham Wellbeing Week, by not only attending some of the great events going on in the area, but by giving ARC your support using the donation button on the ARC website. If you or a loved one are struggling and feel counselling would be a helpful tool, we highly recommend checking out their website.

Click here to make a donation to ARC

The Author

Jonny Vaughan

Founder & Technical Director of 10 Degrees. Jonny's day to day focus is on determining the best technical solutions for our clients, driving technical innovation and leading our sustainability agenda.

The 10 Degrees Team