Climate News 25:09
Recently, we’ve been running a series of workshops recently for councils, where community members are asked to bring a sustainability or climate project idea and work with others to make it a reality.
Participants are grouped by theme (e.g. biodiversity, energy, transport, advocacy etc.) and told they may have to alter or give up their idea, depending on how the group works together and chooses something they can all work on. It’s similar to an environmental champions program but one that focuses more on building project management skills within the community – this happens over time as we provide ongoing support for another six months to deliver the project. Volunteering for these kinds of projects has been in decline in Australia for decades, accelerating during Covid and not recovering yet. For us, these are modest projects that help to rebuild community capacity and that might be a first step towards something bigger. It also requires a different mindset for local governments, shifting from running interventions delivered for or to the community, to ones delivered with the community. That can be an uncomfortable space for government staff as it means messy conversations and projects, having to share power and requiring us to get up from our desks. But if we want to build an active community working on and calling for action on climate change, it’s necessary.
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