Isle of Wight Biosphere and Together 4 CIC are pleased to announce that they have been awarded £60,000 to inspire widespread community action towards climate change, protecting nature and the improvement of key social priorities for our Island.
The funding comes from Centrica’s Energy For Tomorrow fund and involves a number of Partner Groups including The Isle of Wight Youth Trust, Green Isle of Wight and Grow Gurnard.
Three areas of focus
There are three areas of focus: youth opportunity & wellbeing, local food and warmer homes across the Island.
These will provide the support and encouragement to build a critical mass of local action that can showcase the Isle of Wight as a beacon of change and empower individuals and groups to take the initiative.
It demonstrates the power of our Biosphere designation as a catalyst for action, inspiration and investment.
Seven pilot parishes
It will involve engaging seven pilot parishes to develop local projects and wider engagement with climate change action along with creating energy champions, delivering events for young Islanders that help them develop place-based projects to improve their opportunities and wellbeing, and supporting movements to bring retrofit improvements to homes that are vulnerable to heat loss.
It will also provide a solar powered bore hole to bring water to the community farm at Grow Gurnard in a separate infrastructure project.
How you can get involved
A coordinator is in the process of being appointed to lead this work. Along with the funding comes additional support from Centrica including advice and volunteer time, and it is hoped that the process will foster connections and collaborations across our communities. There are various ways that people can get involved:
This pilot project will provide co-ordination and support but needs leaders and volunteers to do the work. The Parishes will own the work they do and we hope it will generate a more widespread wave of action from this initial pilot.
We are encouraging more people to get involved in the activities and decision making in their parishes, to both work together at Parish level to identify opportunities and form working groups but also to get the conversation happening, spread awareness and get local climate action more clearly on the agenda
We also need to connect with existing groups working with ideas that can be replicated in other Parishes by sharing, supporting, capture learnings and inspiring each other
Community decision and prioritisation is typically done by older generations, and can lack the necessary representation of young people to create a balanced view. We need to find ways of engaging young people more in community decision making and we need innovators who can help bring that to life.
Isle of Wight Biosphere
Further background to the IW Biosphere can be found on the website.
The Isle of Wight was awarded Biosphere Reserve status by UNESCO in 2019, only the seventh place in the UK to achieve this. It is a recognition of the unique combination of nature, people and places we have here, where communities and the environment work together in an increasingly sustainable way.
It covers all our 33 parishes on land, and stretches north across the Solent to the shores of the mainland and south into the Channel. Isle of Wight Biosphere Ltd was set up as a nonprofit company by the Biosphere Steering Committee this year to provide a formal vehicle for related funding.
Together 4 CIC
Together 4 is the funding and coordinating arm of Together for Mission Zero. Together for Mission Zero is a civic platform supporting the Isle of Wight’s journey to become a socially thriving, net-zero, nature-positive community by 2040.
It connects residents, businesses, and organisations to collaborate on sustainability initiatives aligned with the Isle of Wight Council’s Mission Zero strategy.
Further background on Together for Mission Zero can be found on the website.
News shared by Martha on behalf of Together for Mission Zero. Ed