Walking for wellbeing with the Centre for Regenerative Medicine

The team on one of their wellbeing walks

The Centre for Regenerative Medicine’s Wellbeing Walks scheme in 2019 aims to promote both physical and mental wellbeing.

The Centre for Regenerative Medicine have been working hard in 2019, with not one but two Gold projects on the go. This project has been focusing on combining their wellbeing walks with litter picking to help protect their local environment.

A walk in the park

The project continued from their summer programme of walks, which were introduced to promote physical exercise, good mental health and encouraging staff to take a break and get outside. Scheduling the walk on different days on alternate weeks made the project more accessible to staff on a variety of working patterns. The walks were promoted via email to all of the Centre’s building users, and future walks listed on the staff intranet. Each walk averaged between 5 – 10 people in attendance, with a number of short-term visitors to the Centre also joining the staff and students.

Making it sustainable

To incentivise attendance, staff and students received a loyalty card upon completion of their first walk, collecting one stamp per walk. Upon completion of their tenth walk, they received a free reusable cup – either a Dopper water bottle or a tempered glass keep cup. Additionally, participants spontaneously decided to collect litter during one walk, which led to the CRM team providing gloves and bags to those who wanted to pick up rubbish as they walked, adding an extra sustainable dimension to the activity.

Find out more about the Sustainability Awards