Our mission is to improve the quality of life for the Black and Ethnic Minority Communities by generating Supplementary livelihood through a programme of scheduled activities to engage BME communities in particular at grassroots level through listening, sharing and ultimately bringing them together to find solutions to Recycling & waste, energy-saving, local food production etc, and further develop and deliver environmental education-interpretation training programmes to BME groups and centres in Hull and East riding of Yorkshire. This we believe is necessary as we are not only working with BME communities to develop their life skills in the built and natural environment but also stimulating other stakeholders’ involvement to enable them to work effectively with ethnic communities.
Our main areas of work are:
Developing Environmental Champions from within BME community who will help in creating links between environmental opportunities and the wider BME communities. These opportunities include
- Facilitate the inclusion of BME communities in environmental education, recreation and enjoyment.
(Through workshops, events, and on the print media. We will organise visits, educational courses for the community. We will work with other partners to bring black and minority Ethnic (BME) communities together in hull and east riding of Yorkshire to discuss with them conserving energy, recycling and its effect on households’ income. Where a session is organised, we will encourage participants to come up with ideas, suggestions and solutions. This will give us the opportunity to well inform the minority households in Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire so they can become agent of change in their various communities. The community recycling/& energy champions who will be trained to become experts in waste management and recycling, energy savings will roll out this programme to schools to raise awareness and engage the youngest brains and their teachers about the 3Rs(Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and other environmental issues both at school and at home.
Encouragement in the form of water bottles etc made from recycled materials will be given to the best participating student/groups at a school.)
- Supporting and encouraging BME involvement in energy-saving schemes. Training programmes in energy management will be sought and made available to most BME communities. This programme will aim to raise awareness on issues of fuel poverty. The scheme will initially start with 54 households on the Beverly and porter street area of Hull. The target will be to help these communities make necessary changes to increase savings on their energy bill by about 11%( about £6240 savings for 39 households in a year) which works out as £108.72 savings for each households. This massive savings will come as a result of the support these households receive from our energy champions.
- Support and encourage local food production and consumption (Encouraging BME communities to eat what they grow and grow what they eat. This is a way of reconnecting them to local, healthy food. BME people should do well on this as most of them have basic farming background; they only need the initiative.)
- Create an information line where people, businesses can get access to information about your waste and who can use that waste. A waste bank will be create on our website and on text alert services where people can exchange information on what material you want or want to get rid of.