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.