Community
Transitioning to a greener world gives us an opportunity to address social and economic challenges, benefiting people and communities alongside the planet.
Steps you can take
Engage with Just Transition campaigns and initiatives
There are many organisations and initiatives seeking to ensure that a just transition is addressed alongside the climate emergency and encouraging nature and biodiversity. Find out more and get involved:
Listen to your community
It’s important that you involve people in talking about how the climate emergency will affect them, and how climate action can take their needs into account. Holding events where you can talk to your local community and work together to find solutions for their problems is a good step towards inclusion.
Community projects
When developing climate action projects, think about how it can both help your community and tackle the climate crisis. You can also think about how you can pool resources with other organisations and communities around you to help create big projects which benefit everyone such as working together to set up community gardens or Eco Shops to give people access to food and reducing waste, or creating community energy projects for local people and businesses.
Useful links:
Learn more and become an ally
Being an ally in matters of climate justice means both openly showing your solidarity with the movement, and supporting the movement through action. You should think about which voices you amplify and where you get your information from, and what knowledge you might be missing which you can learn more about. Taking a look at your social media and seeing where you could do more to share messages of climate justice, particularly from diverse voices, is a great place to start.
Encourage staff & volunteer learning and involvement
Include sustainability as a core part of your staff and volunteer training and development processes, encouraging staff and volunteers to take up learning in this area.
Ensure you cover environmental sustainability in your staff induction process. It is important that sustainability is ingrained in the organisation so by making sure new staff and volunteers are aware of it at the beginning, they know how important it is to consider in every aspect of work.
Useful links:
Create an eco council in your building or office
If you are in a multi-occupancy building - create an eco-council for the building to consider collective actions to reduce energy/ waste e.g. joint purchasing of stationery to reduce delivery miles, implementing recycling schemes at a building level, and representing tenants 'asks' to the landlord.
To build an eco-council, send out a short survey to the people in your building firstly asking them to suggest some key actions that could be taken to reduce waste and energy, then asking whether they would like to be part of an eco-council.
When you set up the first meeting, have a discussion around expectations such as how often you will meet and what you plan to achieve. Have regular meetings and make sure to report back to the other tenants to let them know what progress has been made and how you've helped to make your building greener.
If you are not in a multi-occupancy building, could you set up a eco-council for your office?
Useful links:
Start a library of things
A Library of Things is a way to share equipment with others in your building, between your team, with partner organisations or even in your community.
It's a great way to avoid un-necessary purchases and save money.
Ask for help and support
Ask your local council about what they can do to support you. They might have schemes to help improve energy efficiency of buildings, or to carry out energy audits.
You don't know if you don't ask.
Have a conversation with your funders and/or corporate partners/ supporters about your ambitions/ plans to be more environmental sustainable and see how they might also be able to help and support you.
If enough organisations ask for help, they're more likely to respond with action.
Share the steps you're taking and inspire others
Follow the Share link and share any actions you've been taking to inspire other similar organisations.
Include information about the steps you've been taking on your website, in e-newsletters and on social media.
Shout about what you've done and why, what you have learnt and what benefits it has brought you.
Useful links:
Write a blog and share on social media
Open working is a great way to share what you've been doing.
It helps others to understand your challenges and how you've overcome them and encourages others to make progress.
Why not write a blog sharing what climate action you've taken, why and what you've learnt, and share it via social media.
Case Studies
Actions from the North East and Cumbria
Have you taken action?
If you're a VCSE based in the North East and you've done something about the climate crisis, please share your action with us. We'd love to share it on this website, to inspire others.
