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Communities helping nature

Created by the community for the community by Liz Yorke

Allan takes a look at why community action has such an important role to play in restoring nature...

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” Margaret Wheatley

I'm sure we are all aware that we are facing a nature and climate crisis. I'm also sure that we've all heard about large-scale environmental projects, such as those that are restoring habitats or bringing back native animals like beavers. But are we aware of the importance of local greenspaces and neighbourhoods as places to nurture nature?

Grassroots community action can protect and improve our community spaces for nature and people. Being part of community action also helps us to feel more optimistic about tackling the big issues and provides us with an opportunity to improve our wellbeing through meeting our neighbours and making where we live better for everybody. 

This doesn’t all happen by itself and it needs local leaders and supportive organisations to encourage and help people with common interests and concerns to link up to do something.  

For us at the Trust this all starts with listening, particularly to those people and groups who are labelled as ‘hard to reach’. We prefer to say that these are groups who are ‘easy to ignore’ and we have a team of people whose job it is to discover the strengths in those communities as well as the challenges they face.

Images taken for the Wild About Gardens launch 12th March 2019 - false

We firmly believe that great things happen when we are listening, and not telling, and that people have many great ideas, skills and knowledge that they can contribute. People know what works best in their community so we want to grow active citizens who take part in their community. We never do for people what they can do for themselves and we respect the amazing things that can be achieved through people power. Our philosophy is to encourage and inspire people to drive the change themselves.

From starting with small actions in our local area with our neighbours and communities we can grow the collective strength to take on the bigger environmental challenges we all face together. In the words of a much-quoted African proverb "If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”

There are a host of ideas that community groups can think about. People have got together with neighbours to do local litter picks, they have created wildlife highways in their street and they have developed wildlife-friendly community gardens and orchards to provide food and space for meeting people.

If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.

So, do you want to take action in your community and be part of a global movement tacking the major challenges of our time? Do you want to reach out to others in your local area? Do you need specific advice on developing a group? Do you want to hold a community conversation to develop local actions with other groups and organisations?

We can work with you and your community to make these ideas come to life. Follow the links below to find out more and drop us a line if you'd like our support to get you started.

 

Allan Warnock is the Trust’s Senior Communities Officer and is committed to supporting communities in their bid to help nature.

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