What is a Mens Shed?

Men´s Sheds are community spaces for people to connect, converse and create.
The activities are often similar to garden sheds, but for groups of people to enjoy together.
They help reduce lonliness and isolation, but most importantly, they´re fun.
A Men´s Shed is a place for sharing skills, helping others with practical tasks, or just getting together
for a chat, a game of cards or dominoes, or just a cup of tea or coffee and a custard cream.

Who runs Men´s Sheds?

Most of the sheds in the UK are run by the people that use them, in a bottom up approach.
This grass-roots model can often bring about stronger feelings of fulfilment and achievement in the people
that develop them, and may lead to better sustainability as they don´t often start with large cash
injections.
This isn´t always the case though, a small number of Sheds are run by organisations like Age UK and have
been around for years.
The San Fulgencio Men´s Shed is run by a fully registered non-profit making association.

Are Men´s Sheds just for older people?

Men´s Sheds are for any age, but most of the people that attend them are retired.
This is because a life after employment can be difficult and people often feel they´ve lost their sense of
purpose and place in the world.
They can miss the routine and camaraderie between colleagues that often comes with working life.
This can lead to feelings of lonliness and isolation which can be dangerous for their health and
wellbeing.
However, recognising that age isn´t the only factor in lonliness and isolation, and that there is more to
Men´s Sheds, for example sharing skills, informal learning and enjoyment, most sheds accept men over
fifty, some sheds have younger members.
There is no plan to have an age limit for the San Fulgencio Men´s Shed.

Can Women go?

There are many mens sheds with female members, but most Men´s Sheds exist for the benefits they bring to
men´s health and wellbeing.
Therefore, it´s really down to each individual Shed whnther they invite women, or have separate days for
women to join in.
One of the best things about Men´s Sheds is they facilitate conversations about subjects that men might
usually find difficult to talk about, some men find it easier to open up when it´s just men, but that´s
not always the case.

Men´s Shed M.O.T´s

The idea of these checks is to ensure that you are basically still alive and healthy, (blood pressure,
cholestorol levels, etc.) and to advise how to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Appointments tend to last approximately 20 minutes and have booths so privacy is assured.
(This is something we would particularly like to see at the San Fulgencio Men´s Shed.)

New research from @myGP found some 23% of men will point blank refuse to seek out medical advice about a
health issue due to embarassment. Men´s health trails wonmen´s across several key area, with one in five
men dying before the age of 65.