Sustainable Space Update
How sustainable is your community space? That is exactly the question the community organisations selected to be a part of our Sustainable Spaces pilot programme have been asking themselves over the last six week. Last year, we asked for applications from community organisations to take part in a 3 month pilot programme to look at the sustainability of their community spaces. The programme involves taking the following steps:
Workshops to help groups meaningfully create a Net Zero/Environmental Policy
Working with a local Community Development Officer to form an action plan towards a sustainable space
Networking events with expert agencies, funders and organisations to develop that action plan
A small funding award from us towards items identified through action planning.
We created the programme as identified that many of our members were either just starting on this sustainability journey for their spaces and needed a means of breaking down what actions they could take and that other more established community groups are looking to review their operations and be confident in their sustainability journey.
The programme has a variety of different types of spaces from Village Halls, Community Hubs to events and provision of care services. We specifically wanted to have a wide range of spaces in this pilot phase so that each can learn from eachother and that we here at the Hub would gain a wide variety of knowledge about different spaces to be able to share that learning further.
Our community organisations currently taking part in the pilot project are:
The organisations are currently receiving that one on one support from our team of Community Development Officers with nearly all having completed our training package in creating a Net Zero/Environmental policy which includes templates, factsheets with ideas to consider and a template action plan.
Mhairi, our Community Development Officer for Lochaber was recently out and about on her bike despite the soggy weather taking a ferry journey over to Drimnin to meet with Drimnin Village Hall folks, see their space and deliver the Net Zero/Environmental Policy workshop. They are now working through their action plan so that we can then in turn link them to potential funders and further areas of advice and support. We can also from their action plan identify what elements we can fund to support.
We hope to run the Sustainable Spaces programme again from April for community groups looking to take their sustainability journey. If you are interested in being a part of this please drop us an email to enquiries@hiclimatehub.co.uk and we’ll let you know when the programme becomes available again. We can also run a stand alone Net Zero/Environmental Policy workshop and provide you with our Sustainable Spaces pack content at any time. Again get in touch and we can arrange to run that with your Board, Staff and volunteers.
We’ll be publishing case studies in the future of the progress of the groups selected above and hope that provides some shared learning if you have similar spaces. Keep your eyes peeled for them coming soon.
