By Alex Marshall | Intern Ecologist
Dear all,
Earlier this year we took part in the GlobalGiving Climate Action Campaign and were overwhelmed with our success. Thanks to supporters such as you, we managed to place 8th out of 127 projects worldwide! Raising an amazing £6000 for our work. THANK YOU!
Here's what we've been up to since then:
During the lockdown, we set up a community art club. Every month we have been encouraging the local community to get out and explore nature, and to create artwork inspired by his or her local wildlife, each month focusing on a different theme. We have really loved sharing everyone's creations, we even had entries from across the world!
The future of Andover Trees
We had 3 community consultation workshops in June and July to begin to map out the future development of Andover Trees United. The ideas and ambitions generated by 30+ people from a range of backgrounds and ages will be used to form an action plan for the next 5 years of work for Andover Trees.
Guided by these ideas, we have now formed 6 working groups to focus on the following areas:
Together, each group will create their own mission statement and action plan.
A new project for ATU youth
This August saw the first session of our exciting new project, the Nature in Harmony Exchange Project.
Created in partnership with the Corcovado Foundation from Costa Rica, this project will provide opportunities for youth and young adults to develop their local and global environmental and ecological knowledge and to learn new skills.
Through communication between the young people from Andover and the young people from Drake Bay, participants will be able to share and compare their findings with each other, develop friendships and learn more about the differences and similarities between our environments, lifestyles and cultures.
Empowering our decision-makers of tomorrow to become environmental leaders in their communities.
Volunteer workdays
A few of our volunteers continued to work hard every Monday, making sure essential tasks are carried out in the woods, as well as managing the watering of trees and pots on the allotment.
We have also been busy putting safety measures and procedures in place so that workdays can open up to the general public again now that lockdown is lifting.
This month, we tested out our COVID-19 procedures with a small group of experienced volunteers. Our monthly Saturday and weekly Monday workdays will begin to resume in September through a sign-up-in-advance system.
Wildlife surveys of Harmony Woods have begun!
At the start of May, we began our wildlife survey project, Nature in Harmony.
Nature in Harmony is a 12-month wildlife survey and community engagement project based in Harmony Woods and the wider Diamond Wood. The aim is to begin to create some baseline data of ‘what’s in the woods’, informing future conservation management decisions, whilst also educating and inspiring the local community and young people in local schools, especially our five 6 Trees & 6 Flowers partners, in concepts of woodland ecology, field survey techniques and species identification.
We also set up a citizen science project, encouraging people who walk through Harmony Woods to notice nature, to look out for and identify any wildlife, plants and animals that they can. By submitting photos of their wildlife spots to our project page on the iNaturalist app, they are contributing to the collection of data to find out 'what's in woods'.
Moving into autumn we have lots of exciting work planned, including community event days, continuing our current project work and of course, putting plans together for the 9th year of tree planting with every school in the town.
Thank you enormously for your continued support.
Stay safe and well,
The ATU team.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
