Communities Group: The Greening Campaign
At
the 2007 AGM, there was a general feeling among many Sustainable
Wallingford members that we wanted to reach out into the wider
community of Wallingford and its surrounding villages, to stimulate
greater community action and behaviour change, in response to the twin
drivers of Peak Oil and Climate Change. We wanted to help people move
away from the idea that ‘Sustainable Wallingford is doing it’, and get
them to be enthused about what they might do to contribute to individual
and community activity which underpins more sustainable living. The
Communities Group was set up to consider what we could do to take this
forward.
By
building a greater interest in and understanding of Climate Change
issues, and offering activities that help the wider community to work
together, we hope to encourage more active support for the activities of
Sustainable Wallingford, but also to capture what actions are already
taking place and help people to work together to build on them.
So
what have we done so far?
-
Organised the Sustainable Wallingford
Climate Change Questionnaire in Oct 2008 with 563 households
responding and a number of community groups and schools promoting
it.
-
Organised the
Greening Campaign,
part of the national Greening
Campaign.
- Engaged with the political agenda on Climate Change and
Sustainability.
We have written to all our local District and County Councillors to
ask what their views are on Climate Change and sustainability and
how they are supporting action on this through their council
activities and with their electorate. Sadly we only had a response
from one councillor, which perhaps demonstrates that the issue of
Climate Change is not very high on elected councillors' agenda. We
will be looking to change this in the future.
- Developed an Events Programme.
We are working to deliver a series of events throughout the year on
sustainable themes, including film shows, speakers, the Eco Day and
Sustainable Safari in October and a film fortnight in the Autumn.
See the events pages for more information.
- Building alliances across the community
is an
important part of this groups work in order to help the wider
community to work together. We are talking to churches and schools,
the Northmoor Trust and a variety of other organisations to see how
we can work together to address issues of sustainability and climate
change.
