15th May 2023
Frontier Agriculture is donating £10,000 to mental health and agricultural charities during this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) – the UK’s national week to raise awareness of mental health.
This is the seventh consecutive year the company has donated to charity during MHAW, bringing the value of its ongoing donations to over £60,000.
Money donated will be split between Shout, BEAT, Mind, Anxiety UK, Sane, Addington Fund, Farming Community Network, R.A.B.I and R.S.A.B.I.
Diana Overton, Group Finance Director at Frontier says, “The charities we have donated to provide vital support to people facing mental health challenges in our industry and more widely. The rising cost of living in the UK has made their fundraising efforts more challenging over the last few years and we’re keen to ensure that they continue to receive financial support to enable them to provide help to those who need it most.”
Tackling anxiety this MHAW
MHAW has been run by the Mental Health Foundation for over 20 years and is a nationally supported initiative. Each year MHAW is assigned a different theme and this year the theme is anxiety.
Alexa Charnley, Director of Fundraising and Communications at the Mental Health Foundation explains, “We all experience anxiety but sometimes it can get out of control and become a mental health problem. However, there are things we can do to manage feelings of anxiety and stop them becoming overwhelming.”
Raising awareness of activities for coping with anxiety is a key part of this year’s MHAW campaign and Frontier is using the opportunity to encourage colleagues to ‘walk and talk’ with the launch of a companywide team step challenge.
“Exercising, spending time outdoors and connecting with others are all effective ways of managing your mental health,” Diana explains. “Our goal this Mental Health Awareness Week is to remind colleagues to make time for those activities in their day-to-day lives and have a bit of fun while they are doing it.”
Since the pandemic many Frontier colleagues have shifted to hybrid or home working and the company is hosting a range of local on-site activities across its 46 sites throughout the week to bring people together. Some examples of activities taking place are wellbeing walks, buffet lunches, bowling and coffee mornings.
In addition to its on-site activities, Frontier is marking the occasion with a live virtual all-staff prize draw, giving employees the chance to win up to a week of additional annual leave, and a virtual guest speaker event with a qualified wellbeing practitioner.
Frontier’s work during MHAW is part of its work under The Responsible Choice (TRC) to
promote and encourage good mental health awareness and practices, particularly among those working within agriculture.
How you can engage with MHAW
- Share your experiences of anxiety and the coping mechanisms you have found by using the hashtag #ToHelpMyAnxiety.
- Use Mental Health Foundation resources to learn about how you can help manage anxiety or support those who are experiencing it.
- Follow MHAW activity on social media using the hashtags #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and #MHAW23.
For more information about this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week, visit mentalhealth.org.uk/mhaw or join the conversation on social media using the hashtags above.
