Zoetic outdoors is a new venture from Five Towns Christian Fellowship. Here, it's founder and leader, Ali Compton, explains more about it. 
Zoetic outdoors seeks to use paddle sports, and the old local canals and waterways, as a means to engage with the local community, build relationships and improve physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.
Zoetic was birthed in 2021 after I was approached by someone who I had worked with in a previous church youth work job in East Yorkshire. They had taken on a role with the Canal and River Trust to help develop volunteering and projects from Castleford to Goole and wanted some local connections.
Cutting a long story short, she was setting up a paddlesports club and I joined in. Having paddled as a teenager it was something I knew would benefit the local community.
We managed to secure funding to train up a group of coaches and the qualifications gained would also enable me to lead separate sessions on top of the club sessions.
This started the cogs turning of what it would look like to use the gifts, and opportunities, God has given me to run some sessions for and through the church.
Zoetic means life and in the Greek Zoe relates to the breath and life of God. That same breath he breathed into Adam and Eve, he breathes into us and we want to share that and demonstrate that with others.
The strapline for Zoetic is ‘Life in all it’s fullness’ and it’s taken from John 10:10 where we are told that it is the life that Jesus brings, it’s a full life encompassing every aspect of our lives.
What we have found in our short journey is that paddling offers such a wide range of benefits to such a diverse group of people.
Being out on the water can help overcome fears, help with anxiety and depression, be removed from technology and helps build communication.
We love the fact that when out on the water we can just chat to people without any distractions, apart from the odd canal boat!
Although behind the scenes we remain highly professional and covered under our risk assessments, insurance and qualifications, on the sessions we keep things very relaxed, fluid and tailored to the participants having a really enjoyable experience.
The feedback we’ve had already is pretty amazing.
We’ve had someone who served 10 years in the army and suffer from PTSD to come away from a SUP session saying they’ve ‘never felt peace like that before’ to a recovering addict who wouldn’t engage with any group work and kept themselves isolating to starting to engage with his peers and working his way through the 12 steps programme.
Alongside the paddling we’ve also had a passionate angler as part of our congregation who wanted to use his angling to reach the local community.
We managed to get him trained as a level 2 coach and now he runs all sorts of sessions for the local community and teaching them how to fish whilst also building relationship with people.
We’re planning more sessions this summer for the local community and looking forward to how God leads us and uses us.
