How can your community rise to the climate challenge? Enter the Climate Change Communities Competition, tell us what you'd like to do, and stand a chance to win £500 to do it! **Competition ended Feb 2008**

Can you create a local climate buzz?

What's already happening about climate change in your community?

How can you engage your community with climate change in imaginative and inspiring ways?

What would you like to do to set up new climate projects, or develop existing ones?

Could you inspire neighbouring communities to get involved with climate change?

You're the experts in your community, and we want to support your ideas!

Competition Aim:

To raise awareness of climate change, and what people in your community can do, in an imaginative and inspiring way

Guidelines

• You can think as large or small as you'd like: from training up community climate champions to running a fun climate event at a village fete to planting fruit trees to provide more locally grown food...
• If your community is already climate active, how could you help spread ideas to other local communities?
• Entries can be accepted from any group within the community, making it clear how they will work with the rest of the community, Parish Council, or specific groups within the community.
• Winners should be ready to put ideas into action within 6 months. 

** Download an entry form here **

If you have any queries about completing any sections, or would like further information, please don't hesitate to get in touch: jo@climatex.org or 01865 275 856

** The competition closing date is Fri 8th February 2008 **

 

The winners will be announced at an Oxon Climate Communities event on the evening of Tues 26th February at Wolvercote VIllage Hall. This event will celebrate and share the amazing variety and breadth of climate change work within Oxfordshire towns and parishes and inspire more communities to join in. Put this date in your diary now!

Brought to you by Oxfordshire ClimateXchange, Oxfordshire Rural Community Council and Oxfordshire Association of Local Councils

Existing ways to raise local climate change awareness

Oxfordshire ClimateXchange can provide free events to raise awareness about climate change in Oxfordshire until the end of February 2008.

To help stimulate the local ideas, could you host a climate change event? We can provide the following for free:

• Climate pub quizzes (and prizes)
• Talks on a range of climate change issues, such as energy supplies, the impacts of climate change, domestic energy savings, the science or what people can do... and more.
• Free film screenings of climate change films, including ‘An Inconvenient Truth'
• Low energy light bulb libraries to encourage people to switch their bulbs (saving money and energy)
• Talks and events for local business parks
• Info for Parish Magazine articles
• Climate change Gardeners' Question Times
• Books for Climate change book clubs

• If you're working on a Parish Plan, talk to Oxfordshire Rural Community Council to include ways to tackle Climate Change in the process.

Tell us what you'd like to see happening locally and we can help you put it into action

Find out what other communities are doing:

Communities across Oxfordshire have a wealth of evolving climate change experience - from running Parish-wide energy surveys to hosting a series of events, from hosting film nights to sharing pub quiz tips. See the latest at www.climatex.org/articles/lo-carb-communities/ .

Sources of further info:

‘Ways to tackle climate change'

- the new Defra publication aimed at the parish and town council sector 'Ways to tackle climate change' (PDF, 555KB). The guide showcases the impressive work which many parish and town councils are doing and promotes useful ideas of how to combat climate change. Follow this link to download it: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/publicsector/parish/pdf/ActOnCO2.pdf

Energy Measures Report: Addressing Climate Change and Fuel Poverty - energy measures information for Local Government

The Energy Measures Report, published by the Government on 18 September 2007, sets out the steps that local authorities can take to:

• improve energy efficiency;
• increase the levels of microgeneration and low carbon technologies;
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and
• reduce the number of households living in fuel poverty.

The report is available from the internet only at: 

http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/environment/measures/page41270.html

  

** Further funding opportunities for community climate change work **

NESTA Big Green Challenge

The Big Green Challenge is an ambitious project aimed at stimulating innovation from communities and the not-for-profit sector in response to one of our biggest social challenges: climate change.
The Big Green Challenge is asking communities to compete to achieve 60% reductions in CO2 emissions by October 2009 through innovative and creative methods that can last beyond the life of the Prize.

 

 

 

Contact details: Oxfordshire ClimateXchange, Jo Hamilton, Co-ordinator

T: 01865 275 856 E: info@climatex.org http://www.climatex.org/