Jo Roberts

• Jo Roberts has been a Director and Chief Executive of the Wilderness Foundation since 2004, but has been involved as Projects Director and Project Coordinator since 1998. South African by birth, she enjoyed a rich life of wild places in many parts of Africa as she grew up. Jo trained and worked as a Social Anthropologist during the time of Apartheid, working mainly with rural communities and included indigenous knowledge collection relating to ecology and plant and tree usage. Understanding and measuring the effects of value on wellbeing and encouraging people to respect and understand the value of wilderness and nature lies at the heart of her passion in this work. She today works with a focus on the effects of wilderness in developing sound youth empowerment built on environmental awareness and ethics, and developing positive wellbeing and mental health in young people who are vulnerable or at risk. Using the extensive wilderness networks and my close links to South Africa and Europe, and programmes running there, she merges best practice from around the world into creative programmes that suit British climate and culture.Over the past 23 years, she established a wide range of programmes within the Foundation to meet these needs of nature connections, individuals and society as a whole. These include Wild Swans women’s leadership, Sirius Environmental Leadership Programme, TurnAround Programme, Out There Programme and the Chatham Green Education Programme. As a passionate advocate for the Imbewu Programme in South Africa, in 2014 she launched a Scottish programme to mirror this previously called Imbewu Scotland and now Treun which means Brave in Gaelic. Jo leads the South Africa wilderness trails out reach – keeping her love of the wild intact and sharing this with others. This involves working with schools and leadership groups to experience the true wilderness of the Imfolozi Game Reserve in primitive back packing, and other wild places in Europe and Scotland.Over the past 5 years she has been delivering wilderness therapy programmes for adults and young people - and teaching wilderness therapy theory and practice to other therapists who want to take on this work - teaching in the UK, Slovakia, Poland and France. Jo is a Master NLP Practitioner and Advanced Psychotherapeutic Integrative Counsellor, as well as an REBT coach. She uses her skills in behaviour change facilitation and motivation across the board, with a particular focus on the outdoors. Wherever she can she facilitates and leads groups and loves the design of outdoor programmes for a wide and diverse range of clients ranging from survivors of domestic violence, asylum seekers, youth at risk, adults with trauma or mental and emotional challenges, children and individual clients. She currents serves as a Commissioner with the Essex Climate Action Commission and enjoys each day of learning and action in how to make a difference in order to protect biodiversity, drive positive behaviour change as part of the wider picture to protect our planet..from ourselves and for all life on earth. She believes her work is not work but life in itself.

• Participation on Humanity Rising

See Also

• HR!Day248 - Wilderness Therapy – Nurturing relationships with self, others and the natural world| Wilderness Therapy – Nurturing relationships with self, others and the natural world