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Environmental Tip Of the Week: Radiators will give out heat for about 30 minutes after the boiler has switched off. So, if the last person in your home leaves at a regular time, set the heating to switch off 30 minutes before. Over the winter this could easily save you £50 of energy. The same principle might be able to be applied to your workplace.http://www.diynot.com/pages/in/in013.php http://www.ncdc.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=9610
Last night I caught up with the Young Advisers in Lewisham, to see what the new Young Mayor and Deputy Young Mayor had been doing since they were elected last month. The evening was great, the local police were there to give information on local crime, and Siobhan has been approached by Trident, an agency which helps prevent gun crime among the black communities in Britain.
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Luziane and Siobhan also met Ken Livingstone last week and later handed out awards at a care leavers ceremony, where young people were leaving their care homes to go back into their communities.
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There were a few new faces among the Young Advisers as well, including Daniel, Elliot and Maddy who were all candidates for the election.
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Siobhan and Luziane have just started a blog, which is on the website www.binvolved.org.uk – and on the website there is also more information on the Young Mayor and her advisers, and what they aim to achieve over the year.
I met some Bolivians over the weekend, who started telling me about the renewal of community justice in Bolivia, under president Morales. This is where local communities together decide the verdict and punishment for petty crime, such as vandalism. It struck me that this might be a good mechanism for community engagement in general, be it in Bolivia or the UK. It would help address local grievances at local level, would promote dialogue between residents, encourage cooperation, and increase awareness about local issues.
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And, moreover, this is something that TCC could pioneer – it would draw on our expertise, and further develop our skills in community engagement. What do people think??
Also at the Consultation Institute conference (see blog below), I learnt about Lulus - Locally Unpopular Land Use, and Bananas – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. Anyone got any consultation stories to tell about these?
I went to a conference about ‘Engaging the Hard-to-Reach’ last week. The event, run by The Consultation Institute (TCI), was attended by a variety of delegates from local statutory, voluntary and other organisations. Presenters came from the Ethnic Minority Foundation, Westminster City Council, The Foyer Foundation, Ipsos MORI, the Federation of Small Businesses, Age Concern and Transport for London and talked about their experiences of engaging with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups such as ethnic minority communities, economic migrants and asylum seekers, young people, older people, and small businesses.
Elizabeth Gammel from TCI also talked about the term ‘hard-to-reach’ and what it actually means. Some research she carried out recently amongst TCI members showed that 50% of them use the term and 50% don’t, and even those who do don’t like using it, so she suggested that perhaps ‘seldom heard’ is more accurate - they're not necessary difficult to engage with, but simply require different approaches from traditional consultation techniques. What does anyone else think about this and does anyone have any interesting case studies about working with ‘hard-to-reach’/’seldom heard’ groups?
Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson said today that local authorities are at the forefront of the UK's efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Stats on local and regional emissions for 2004 were released today, underlining the vital role of local authorities in fighting climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, both in their own work and in the wider community.
The statistics showed that:
* Nationally, 44 per cent of emissions were attributed to 'industrial, commercial and public sector' sources, 29 per cent to the domestic sector and 28 per cent to road transport.
* In about a third of local authorities, the emissions from the domestic sector were higher than from the industrial, commercial and public sectors.
* About 48 per cent of domestic emissions are due to gas use, 41 per cent are due to electricity use, and 10 per cent are attributable to the use of other fuels.
He said that local authorities were increasingly taking up the challenge and that "Everyone has a role to play in fighting climate change and reducing emissions…Local authorities are connected to their local communities, and understand them well. As well as taking action to reduce emissions themselves, they have a vital role to play in challenging and informing their citizens.”
Sounds like a case from the Carbon Crime Stoppers to me!
I blogged a couple of months ago about a Beacon Open Day event on 'Enabling Positive Youth Engagement' that Kasia and I debuted our new Writing On the Wall product at. This newsletter explains a bit more about what went on at the event, and includes pics of the Writing on the Wall as well as the Democracy Wall we piloted there during last year's Local Democracy Week. Download pye_event_newsletter.pdf
Jack and Sarah have recently blogged about our Emotimap work in East Sussex. In the meantime, Londoners have also been mapping their area through the Museum of London’s ‘Map My London’ project – a kind of online variation of our emotimap which invites Londoners to map their memories of their local neighbourhoods. Check it out at www.mapmylondon.com. At a conference I was at today, a representative from Transport for London also talked about a similar-sounding new project they will soon be launching which will also involve maps and people sticking flags in particular areas to describe what they think needs doing there. So GPS Satnavs might be all the rage right now, but the trusty map lives on in the consultation world!
Indoor plants are a natural air conditioner and can remove up to 87% of indoor pollution each day! Plants take in Carbon Dioxide as they grow, so help in a small way to reduce global warming. They also of course help you reconnect with nature, reminding you or the natural environment beyond your window ;-) Avoid plastic plants - they are evil!
World Environment Day 2006 took place back in July. In order to encourage people to make small promises such as turning off the tap when you brush your teeth or using a ‘bag for life’, the Environment Agency ran a series of road shows across the country. I encountered it in Brighton a few months ago, where I filled out my promise card and vowed to change my ways. Today I received an email from the EA allowing me to track the progress my promise has made so far. Check out the site here and make your own promises too! The site also tracks which towns are making the most promises and waste that has been saved since the start of the campaign, as well as the top organisations, top individuals and a 'battle of the sexes' to see whether the top promisers are male or female.
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