Celebrating 25 Years of Heath Hands
This year is an exciting one for Heath Hands as the charity celebrates 25 years since it was founded by local residents. Led by Bobby de Joia, originally from New York, and inspired by the work of the Central Park Conservancy, they got chatting to Heath’s Rangers and reached an agreement with the then Superintendent to start getting the local community involved in helping care for the Heath.
Our 25th anniversary celebration
To celebrate turning 25 we held a celebration (pictured above) at the Kenwood House Kitchen Garden during Volunteers Week, with thanks to English Heritage for providing the amazing venue! We also commissioned local filmmaker Matt Maran to make a short film – a beautiful celebration of the Heath and our work. You can watch the film below and read more about our history here.
Over the past 25 years, things have evolved, with the charity growing and recruiting a fantastic staff team to lead some 250 members. Running over 10 activities and volunteer sessions a week, we work with thousands of people every year and contribute over 15,000 hours of volunteering to Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood and Kenwood.
Conservation and garden maintenance remain at the core of our activities, but we have developed programmes to cover other areas. Community outreach encourages wider participation in our green spaces, especially for those who may find it harder to take part. Our learning and school programmes help people find out more about nature and wildlife on our green spaces and an increasing area of focus is wellbeing. We actively work with local healthcare providers to signpost people to beneficial activities in nature and run targeted activities such as health walks and nature mindfulness to improve health outcomes.
Conservation volunteers at the Mixed Pond
Conservation volunteers installing a stag beetle loggery
Volunteers at the Kenwood Estate
Wildlife interpreters running a stall at a local street party
Volunteers running family nature activities
All of this work is done in close collaboration with our key partners, in particular the City of London and English Heritage, who manage Hampstead Heath and the Kenwood Estate, but also a whole range of local organisations and we look forward to continuing this work over the next 25 years!
If you would like to support this work and find out more about what we do on a regular basis, do consider becoming a friend of Heath Hands!
