Supporting Deeplish Community Association to Take Action For Climate & Nature

Groundwork’s Community Climate Action Lead, Lydia has been working closely with Deeplish Community Association over the past six month supporting them to develop their Climate and Sustainability Roadmap and Action Plan.

Centre Manager, Sohail is one of the most passionate people we’ve met in the community and is extremely keen to engage the wider community in climate action whilst simultaneously addressing other local issues.

We kickstarted our support by facilitating climate conversation workshops to educate and empower the community around take proportionate action.

From here we arranged more specific engagement activities on three topics the community highlighted as important to them;

  1. Recycling and waste
  2. Nature
  3. Low carbon food

Lydia ran sessions which informed centre users about how these topics impact our planet. From here the community discussed and shared ideas about what they could do differently locally, which would also make a difference globally. This included:

  • Idea 1 – More culturally appropriate signage created by centre users so the community know how to properly dispose of waste
  • Idea 2 – Helped them come up with plans for seasonal growing and to explore working with local schools and our outdoor learning officer on forest schools
  • Idea 3 – From our low carbon cooking session, the DCA’S Holiday Activities Fund programme are going to develop cooking classes and a community café with the young people

Lydia has made so much difference into our neighbourhood and community

Sohail Ahmad, Centre Manager 

Groundwork Sustainability Consultants were also able to support the Deeplish Community Association to reduce their carbon footprint and become a community retrofit pioneer.

As part of VCSE Energy Efficiency scheme, consultants conducted an energy audit which helped Suhail understand where the biggest emissions were coming from and outlined a list of actions that need could make the building more energy efficient and reduce the centre’s carbon emissions.