ARK at Egwood
Changing Lives Within Our Community
What is ARK?
Acts of Random Kindness (ARK), is a land-based day facility at Egwood, near the village of Merriott in South Somerset. On 12 acres of land, it comprises animals, horticulture and communal buildings, and offers a range of activities, experiences and support services to improve health, wellbeing and opportunities for all.
Our approach is one that will build the ethos of community, through integrated intergenerational work.
Our objective is to provide individuals with a meaningful and worthwhile experience, whilst gaining skills, knowledge and confidence, to live life to their full potential, by enabling participation and inclusion.
Land-based environment
The land-based environment gives the opportunity to undertake therapeutic work and referrals for those with physical and emotional health issues or those wishing to gain new skills. This may include those needing to be more active, overcoming trauma, physical recovery, or working through anxiety, stress or depression. We enable everyone to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage.
Therapeutic use of outside spaces and animals has been proven to have a positive impact in helping to restore wellbeing, confidence and self-esteem with people of all ages.
What we do...
We currently have 12 acres of land/woodland at our disposal. It is our aim that we will educate our service users in skills such as dry-stone walling, hedge laying, animal husbandry (including poultry keeping), forestry, horticulture (gardening, floristry, growing vegetables) as well as communication and life skills.
We also offer equine facilitated therapy, nature therapy and counselling.
We then aim to engage with the local communities (initially Lopen, Merriott and Hinton St George), to provide pop up lunch clubs, using the produce farmed by the service users at Egwood.
Become a Volunteer
Within the framework of the ARK project, there is the opportunity for those in the community who have skills and time that they would like to share to become volunteers. Many people who may have retired, or are unable to work for various reasons, have a wealth of knowledge and experience and are looking for a worthwhile way to stay active and contribute to the community they live in or as a mechanism to overcome isolation.
