Support Our Community Climate Action Toolkit

Aim: Communities are powerful! We aim to provide as many communities as possible with the resources to setup and develop a Climate Action Group.

This is a join project between COMMEET and The Schumacher Institute  

Who Are We?

The Schumacher Institute and COMMEET supported by an international group have created a toolkit to help community groups realise how their unified actions can make a difference. The toolkit aims to provide practical and easy to use tools and resources to empower a small group of people to take action on climate change, engaging their community.  It offers a menu of over 20 tools, that embrace heads, hearts and hands, and includes: Appreciating your environment, Postcard from the future, Finding potential projects and Developing a vision statement.  

Why Are We Fundraising?

Funding is needed for the final stage of design and illustration. 

UN Secretary-General Ant nio Guterres called the IPCC report of August 2021, a code red for humanity, and said that If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. Citizens have a crucial role to play in creating a groundswell for change. He has continued to issue warnings and to galvanise action since then.

While Governments and big businesses need to do more, local groups have an important role to play. Engaging with the hearts, heads and hands of the local community is crucial. Every community is unique, but the question confronting these communities is how to translate the complex global issue of climate change into straightforward meaningful action at the local level.  The toolkit we have created will support community groups on their journeys.

More information

This toolkit aims to: -

• Provide practical and easy to use tools and resources
• Show how to set up and develop or refresh a climate change action group
• Help a group understand their local situation
• Help a group move in to meaningful action to reduce future climate change and cope with the change that is already happening
• Help ensure a diversity of views and approaches are considered
• Encourage consideration of action at different levels recognising the value of personal and community action as well as working to influence the wider context
• Help a group find a creative way forward and not follow a defined route (every community is unique!)

Instead of telling people what they must do, the toolkit is all about helping people to think for themselves and to work out what will be most effective in their community in driving effective change.  Our aim is to produce an accessible and engaging document. 

We will use funds to support the design, illustration and distribution of this toolkit. 

Download your copy here

Footnotes

The COMMEET Fellowship has a vision to accelerate regional sustainable development through empowering local communities. It is an international Fellowship and its mission is to promote communities across the world to take responsibility for their future into their own hands. COMMEET helps communities by facilitating access to knowledge, networks, tools and resources.  This is one of several Toolkits that COMMEET has been developing and follows on from Toolkit Promoting the Wellbeing of Migrants and Displaced Persons. See: https://commeet.org/ 

The Schumacher Institute is a diverse network of fellows dedicated to delivering innovative systems solutions to the world's most pressing problems through research, training, events and consultancy. It seeks to:

• Contribute to the transformation of society, so that countries and communities can converge to similar levels of development within the limits of the earth's resources, and with increasing equity for people today and for future generations.
• Help people prepare for a future in which disruptive change will happen with increasing speed, and will demand a high degree of adaptability.
• Build on the ideas expressed in the works of E. F. Schumacher, particularly working with nature, appropriate technology at the right scale, meaningful work, people-centred development, local actions, peace and non-violent approaches.

See: The Schumacher Institute  COMMEET

(ILLUSTRATIONS BY JENNY BOWERS CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Follow us to find out more about what we do at The Schumacher Institute.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 5th June 2023