![The Green Care Eurobodalla team in their office around their fire. From left to right: Joey Collins, Matt Keating and Jack Boyce-Norman. The Green Care Eurobodalla team in their office around their fire. From left to right: Joey Collins, Matt Keating and Jack Boyce-Norman.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/156570134/06325c3e-dc52-42a2-8b69-f9e8e0a98fae.JPG/r0_0_5184_2915_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The Eurobodalla's newest NDIS provider is focusing on therapeutic immersion in the outdoors.
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Green Care Eurobodalla officially launched this month by Joey Collins, Matt Keating and Jack Boyce-Norman - a trio of Moruya-based outdoor lovers who claim they have spent their whole lives practicing 'green care'.
Green care is a growing field of therapy where sessions occur outdoors, recognising the organic relationships between humans and nature.
The idea started when Mr Keating, who is a bovine-lover and grew up on a property, heard about the benefits of animal therapy.
"We thought we could do something a little bit unusual like that," Ms Collins said.
Like an ember, the concept grew and grew, with each new exciting idea fanning the flame.
"We had an overwhelming flourishing of ideas, and started getting really excited," Mr Keating said.
They approached local NDIS providers, but in mid-2022 decided they could set up their idea themselves.
Empowered to choose nature
Green Care Eurobodalla are establishing a campsite in West Wamban with a chicken coop and outdoor kitchen.
Clients can participate in activities including 4-wheel-driving, bushwalking, cooking, creating bush furniture through woodwork, gardening and caring for animals.
The organisation wants to run programs to meet the needs of their clients, empowering disabled people with the ability to choose what they want to do.
"Living off the land and living sustainably and producing your own food has become a big draw for people coming to the area," Mr Keating said. "Why should someone with a disability not have access to that life too?
"Why is that choice not even available?
"Our participants will set the agenda. It will come down to what they want to do. We want to give them choice."
The lack of choice is something the trio of founders critique about the current NDIS system. They see themselves, as Ms Collins said, "thinking outside the box of what is possible".
Green Care Eurobodalla wants to provide choices NDIS clients would otherwise not have. Mainly, the trio just want to share the outdoors they love with others who otherwise might not be able to.
"We live in the most beautiful part of the world," Mr Keating said.
"Some of the greatest lookouts in National Parks - which are for everyone and owned by everyone - are completely inaccessible for people with disabilities or mobility issues.
"How can they do it if they don't even have the choice?"
Before COVID and Green Care Eurobodalla, Mr Keating was working in the disability support sector. He took one client into the bush to do some chainsawing. The client loved it.
"Like most people with disabilities he had been told all his life all the things he couldn't do," Mr Keating said.
"We want to look at what they can do.
"What can you do and how can we help you do more?"
Nature isn't too dangerous
Mr Boyce-Norman moved to the Eurobodalla almost three years ago, and instantly fell in love with the beauty of the outdoors in the shire.
"We have so many beautiful places in our region," he said. The aesthetic of the nature coast is a recurring theme amongst the three.
"If I can show other people who don't have the chance to go out and see those things themselves, that would be awesome."
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Mr Boyce-Norman has received hesitant push back when he told friends the places he was planning to take people with a disability.
"They'll say things like 'disabled people can't go there - it's too far, too dangerous for them,'" he said.
"But we take them there and they absolutely love it."
He said in his time working in disability support, the biggest grins always came when he took his clients "out bush".
"You cannot take them away from the place," he said.
"Nature is so therapeutic."
Green Care Eurobodalla is officially launching these school holidays but is taking bookings beforehand at their website: greencareeurobodalla.com