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Cornwall Voluntary and Community Sector Climate and Nature Resilience Kickoff!

Posted on 02.05.22

MANDA BROOKMAN DEVON HUB MARCH 2023

So 30 plus of us from the Cornwall voluntary and community sector met, for an properly epiphanous day, on 27th April 2022. The first physical gathering for the sector on climate and nature action – and we covered an enormous range of issues, with a view to determining how we now go forward.

The links from the day are below:

1: The current case studies, a one pager statement of intent from a wide variety of of VCSE organisations are here:  feel free to download, make your own, and send it to us to upload on the Volunteer Cornwall and CoaST sites.

2: The google link to the slides Peter and I presented, with all the hyperlinks in them:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1g0SM87pCuc6jFGsbj8VLeqbgtyj523-FGe17nFcQfF4/edit?usp=sharing

3: The google link to the 12 Point Action Plan draft, there to be downloaded and customised as your organisation wishes:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13ij4QuKAFbMKJTrziSbt3CnvA2CWEu5bYPwGrc5KR-c/edit?usp=sharing

4: The link to the Cornwall VSF platform for VCSE specific conversations:

https://cornwallvsf.org/

5: The link to the CoaST platform, for all climate and nature resilience for all discussions and resources:

https://coastproject.co.uk/category/climate-resilience/

https://coastproject.co.uk/category/habitat/

6: The link to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, with multiple options for engagement of organisations and staff and volunteers (they’re the ones protecting the natural places we are relying on for health and wellbeing – we need to support them in that fight):

https://coastproject.co.uk/cornwall-wildlife-trust/

 

7: The link to VONNE (Vol Orgs North East) Going Green Together website: https://www.goinggreentogether.org/ – thankyou, Georgia Goncalves for inspiring us!

8: And the ACEVO (Association of Chief Execs of Voluntary Organisations) have some extremely interesting points here on climate leadership: https://www.acevo.org.uk/influencing/climate-emergency/climate-principles/

9: And you can see the NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) comments on environmental drivers in their Road Ahead 2022 report here: https://beta.ncvo.org.uk/ncvo-publications/road-ahead-2022/environmental-drivers/

10: And Peter’s feedback from the last session is below:

  • Do not limit our interpretation of involving young people
  • Build accountability into our organisations
  • Visualise our plans and actions in our spaces
  • Speak with one voice – e.g. VCSE Climate and Nature Collective?
  • Bring another organisation to the next meeting
  • Understand and articulate how we are already part of unrecognised responses to the climate emergency
  • Work to create a Cornwall Pension Fund
  • Find the urgency
  • Set up climate change committees in our organisations
  • Announce a VCSE climate emergency declaration
  • Support and appreciate each other
  • More inclusive event times – e.g. for public transport

Then there were two offers/invitations:

  1. 10 May 7pm at the Princess Pavilion in Falmouth, about the potential community ownership of the leisure centre
  2. 160 young people will be taking part in the NCS programme in July, organisations are invited to get involved.

With thanks to the fabulous Peter Lefort, Partnerships Lead from the Uni of Exeter; to Epiphany House, for a beautiful (if cool!) venue and delicious lunch; to Cornwall Council, for helping with venue costs and to Volunteer Cornwall for investing in the whole notion of VCSE climate and nature resilience.

I’ve created a discussion forum here, so we can continue to decide next steps and share our learning and wisdom – there were some actually brilliant decisions taken and made on the day, and we can inspire each other. I’ll respond immediately to any comments and thoughts added to the forum. 🙂 The connection made between those working on poverty and housing, and wildlife, and the connections around intergenerational work and collaboration, such as with Age UK, Young People Cornwall, and many others, were proper job briliant.

In the meantime: we finish with the response from Carrie, Florence and Rupert, all of whom contributed with such insight and clarity:

Just to quickly say a big thank you for including us yesterday and at such short notice too. It was really great to have had the opportunity to get the kids involved. They thoroughly enjoyed it, learned loads and it’s inspired them to do more events like that. I’m not sure that they realised before this week that adults would actually listen to them. They know that people in education will do, or people I set them up with, because that’s their job or I’ve asked them to. But I think it really was an eye opener for them over the last two days to know that real adults tackling real problems do actually genuinely think that their opinions are valid. They were also encouraged to know that adults in businesses and communities were spending time thinking of solutions to the things they care about. Please do let me know if there are other similar events coming up or if there are things which you think would be good for the wider group of similar young people.

Best Wishes,

Carrie, Florence & Rupert