Page 78 - Phonebox Magazine June 2013

Five years ago the charity Climb Your Mountain (CYM) was set up by Charlie Wardle who continues to run the organisation, based in Milton Keynes. The aims and objectives were simple – to help anyone who was going
through a dif cult time in their life and had ‘their own personal mountain’ to climb. Initially the focus was to get people to participate in exercise, activities and challenges in order for them to improve their situation by the wide range of bene ts this delivers.
This is achieved by increasing their confidence, improving self-esteem, having a focus, doing something positive, meeting new people, going to new places, a feeling of achievement and of course helping both their physical and mental health.
CYM has offered hundreds of opportunities in this respect with regular free walks, hikes, tness classes, running club and cycling club plus many weekend trips and challenges away and to date over 1,300 people have participated in these activities. They are pretty much open to anyone and are always safe, friendly, fun and welcoming. When people join in these activities the focus is to enjoy them for what they are and people will naturally take the bene ts they offer.
However, so many people struggle with issues such as depression, stress and anxiety and although the physical activities are hugely bene cial they are unlikely to solve, on their own, the underlying issues. It is so important for people to try and understand why they feel the way they do, why they behave a certain way, why they think how they do, etc... in order to be able to then work out what is best for them to treat, manage and then prevent these issues. So in the last few years CYM has been offering free educational courses and workshops so people have more knowledge, information and better understanding so they are more likely to be able to help themselves.
Over 1,200 people have attended the courses and workshops that are offered and focus on stress, depression, anxiety, con dence, self-esteem, barriers to wellbeing, nutrition and exercise. The feedback has been exceptional and the aim is to try to expand the educational side of CYM to offer workshops, courses and seminars to companies as well as the public.
In terms of funding the charity struggles to obtain grants due to the fact that it is a very ‘open’ charity with the aims of helping anybody for any reason associated with their health and wellbeing and people getting involved don’t have to say what their problem is or issues are. Charlie says “many people don’t actually know what their issues are or do not want to admit to them and be labelled in some way, so if we insisted that people had to declare an issue then hundreds of people would not get involved and bene t”. We often have people who will admit to a speci c problem several months after becoming involved or they say they now recognise what their issues are once they have attended a course.
Most of the funding comes from people taking part in activities and challenges to raise sponsorship for the charity. This could be from the UK trips and challenges that CYM offers such as Snowdon, Ben Nevis, Lake District, Yorkshire 3 Peaks, Brecon Beacons, Coastal trips, etc... or the larger overseas fundraising trips like Kilimanjaro, Inca Trail, Everest Base Camp or Great Wall of China. Or it could be from people doing their own event or challenge and raising money for CYM. We would love more people to raise money for us and take part in these fundraising trips and challenges so we can then offer more free activities, courses, workshops and support to people.
If you would like to get involved with Climb Your Mountain either to help yourself overcome personal issues, to improve your physical and mental health, to help other people or to help the charity as a volunteer or fundraiser then please get in touch either via the website www.climbyourmountain.org or by email info@ climbyourmountain.org
CLIMB YOUR MOUNTAIN
78 Phonebox Magazine