Strawberry Fields Foundation (freedom from fear).

“This process mixes education with training and digital visualisation. It’s a most powerful aid that can to help to create a better world for everyone.” Sir Tim Smit, Creator of the Eden project.

We offer

Leadership and empowerment courses for managing emotional health and well being. They include managing loss, bereavement and social anxiety. The loss may be a relationship, a loved one, the fear of losing your job or even fear itself. 

(free of charge) for deserving causes and organisations, wherever possible.

Who are we? and what is our vision?

We are a team of compassionate professionals who are dedicated to creating a society where fear and stress are minimised. 

Who is it for? 

 HR – Organisations and Businesses that need help for their employees and managers to have better more fulfilled roles in the workplace and their lives in general. It is particularly useful where redundancies may have an impact (including restructuring) and for organisations that want to build up the morale of their workforce. It is fundamentally an empowerment programme that helps individuals overcome anxiety and stress by helping them to focus on what really matters, their own self worth, self respect, mental health and well being.  

Why do we do this?

Simply because we care about people and believe that with the right understanding people can care for their own mental health and well being. We all experience loss of one kind or another, but suffering unnecessarily, is a choice. We can provide the learning and the tools to empower people through their loss or emotional upset.

My Own Story (John Rainford). My vision is to help people find their true potential. I want to enable people to be empowered through the journey of self discovery by unlocking their ability to become free-thinkers, and fearless in both self expression and self confidence.

The Strawberry Fields Foundation was borne out of a desire to create a better world for everyone and especially our young people who seem more repressed, anxious and suicidal than ever. You only have to read the statistics in the media to realise this. It is not scare mongering but the reality of our times.

One Chief Executive of a children’s charity told me that teenagers when faced  with problems turned to self harming or suicide as a first resort. What – you may ask – on earth is going on???

I have my own personal experience, with my own children self harming. They were suffering from PTSD after a fatal car accident where the other driver was killed. The problems snowballed when the education system did not respond in an empathetic way to my children’s predicament. The school system isn’t really geared to non-conforming children who are afraid. 

The irony for me, was that I was teaching Leadership and empowerment skills at Universities, and to vice presidents and scientists at some of the leading institutions in the world, including companies like Shell, ABB and Rolls Royce and in some of the words top business schools in the States, the Far East and in Europe.

Could we transfer these leadership qualities and transfer the learning and skill sets like emotional intelligence to a younger audience, to my children and later on to foster children in our care?

The answer was a resounding YES, how then could I convince the learning institutions that there was perhaps a better way to learn and manage their emotions?

I am still on that journey and I am fortunate that I have met some smart  people on that path, including our team of compassionate leaders – who are helping me, as much as possible, to change the way society thinks and learns. We have worked for organisations including Councils to improve staff morale and build their teams to a higher level of collaboration and communication.

It’s a mammoth task, as you might imagine, the institutions have been around for hundreds of years and believe (in the main) that if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it. Of course our whole education and societal system is fundamentally flawed and broken but very few people are going to stick their necks out and admit they have a problem.

Who have we worked for, in a social context? The Samaritans, and Charities that help people to manage their emotions, Hospices, Young peoples development organisations such as Young Foundation, Young Enterprise and many other charities that help with emotional well being. We are working with “Just Straight Talking” – a charity that empowers people – who have been down on their luck, Kate Beale runs this amazing charity and we helping them both technologically and gaining sponsorship through a Business to Business arrangement. We help organisations and businesses to use our Darwin Matrix, and in return they will sponsor the “Just Straight Talking” charity. We believe these powerful techniques can help many people whether they have anxiety issues or not. Essentially if you imagine that everyone has a ‘Leader within’ – then we can use that model to help create and build resilience. It is not a one off, rather because of the Darwin Matrix, we can offer on going support – mentoring or coaching where necessary.