New life is being breathed into a popular small café but that is just the start of a new project aimed at improving employment opportunities and using nature to help boost people’s health.
Connect Outdoors – a social enterprise – has been set up to help address social and mental health issues through outdoor activities. It aims to invest 100% of its profits back into the company.
Formerly the Little Shed, the organisation will reopen the kiosk at the Dhoon on Monday in time for the Isle of Man TT and is known as Zen at the Glen.
However, the team behind the Little Shed announced in January 2024 that it would not be renewing its lease on the premises due to ‘spiralling costs’.
The shed has lain empty until now.
For the Isle of Man TT, Zen at the Glen will be serving up bacon and sausage baps in the morning for hungry TT visitors before they head off to catch a day’s racing.
But the menu will change after the races with a more wholesome offering of soups and homemade cakes. Connect Outdoors has been supported by the previous owner of the Little Shed.
But, more importantly, Kate Bergquist, of Connect Outdoors – who also runs Soul Adventures IOM – says it will offer valuable employment for neurodiverse people.
She said: ‘The Café will be a social enterprise café that offers more than just delicious soups, cakes and coffee.
‘It will provide vital supported work placements and employability pathways for our neurodiverse community.
‘Our business model for the café is about finding solutions to enable neurodiverse people to access and maintain employment, by designing a working environment that is suitable to their needs.
‘At Zen, we strive to create an inclusive space where our neurodiverse community can be authentically themselves and connect with one another to form strong resilient communities.’
The Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture (DEFA) which owns Dhoon Glen offered Connect Outdoors an opportunity to take on the café but also scope to expand.
Longer term, Kate hopes to build a wooden classroom and also an outdoor firepit as part of the wider project.
She explained: ‘Our mission is to actively bring together members of the community in an outdoor environment. We connect people through shared interests, providing activities and events that support personal wellbeing and growth, while also celebrating and protecting our natural world.
‘We aim to provide a nature-based amenity which offers preventative and therapeutic approaches to improve the quality of life and well-being for all our community.
Another crucial element to Connect Outdoors’ aims is to provide social prescribing.
In the UK, GPs can already prescribe community activities, such as arts and exercise, as an alternative to clinical medicine. Kate is a social prescribing ambassador for the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP)
She said: ‘Social prescribing can help change the circumstances that make people unwell. It can empower people to manage existing health problems, while also supporting people to reconnect back to themselves and their communities.
‘There is so much evidence to show the direct links that green and blue spaces have on health and well-being, especially to support good mental health.
‘We have an abundance of assets and resources on our Island that can support a person health, including glens, plantations, rivers, the sea, hills, beaches and parks and nature – we must start exploring the use of them for our health.’
Kate says there is evidence to show that at least 25% of GP visits are for social problems such as, loneliness, debt or stress which social prescribing can help address.
She said: ‘Connect Outdoors will work with our community members and partners to co-design and create sustainable, meaningful, and purposeful activities that support some of our vulnerable people in the community, while creating a safe and inviting space for anyone who is lonely or feeling isolated.
‘We are committed to creating a culture of inclusivity and diversity across everything we do.
‘DEFA has been very supportive and are very keen to support us in utilising our natural environments and accessible green and blue spaces for health and wellbeing.’
Kate says the enterprise will also work on helping tackle mental health issues among young people and those with autism.
Connect Outdoors will offer a range of programmes across the year so that people can book onto sessions they are interested in. Some will be free for people to access, some will have a small fee attached to cover provisions and some will be paid-for events. It will also offer bespoke events when requested.
It will also hold seasonal events, natural spa and wellness days, family events and orienteering for children.