Making the most of your local community

As a student on my summer holidays, I've been very lucky to have an abundance of spare time on my hands in the last couple months. During this time I've had some great opportunities to explore and get involved with the local community and make the most of all the benefits that living in a big city has to offer. Unsurprisingly, a fair proportion of these activities and groups have been environmentally focused! So I thought I'd make a post about some of the things I've been up to, the amazing people I've met and advice for finding or even starting similar projects in your town or city!

I started off my summer in May with probably my favourite environmental event this year - A rock concert/networking event for local eco-charities and organisations called Environmental Rock. This was a collection of most of the major environmental groups in Southampton and allowed me to discover some really interesting causes. Not only was this a really good excuse to get a few pitchers in but also a really wholesome display of the local community coming together to showcase their dedication towards environmental causes!

After signing up to a few different mailing lists and joining a few facebook groups, this set me up nicely and I was able to find a fair number of events and meetings to get involved with. So in no particular order, here are the groups and events I was lucky enough to stumble upon in the last few months!
  • Southampton Cycling Campaign who are a group of cyclists who are both a lobby group for making the city more bike friendly and a social group that do monthly rides together. I was able to take part in one of their rides to Romsey as part of National Bike Week. I explored parts of the city/countryside I didn't even know existed, had a good workout and met some friendly, like-minded people 
  • I also took part in one of the HSBC city rides where they shut some major roads in Southampton so that people could get out on their bikes without any pressure from motorists!  
  • I volunteered at Clean Air day the following week and was able to learn more about Southampton's strategy (or lack thereof) to tackle the huge problem of air pollution. 
  • Somewhere along the way I also found Southampton Friends of the Earth group and have been to a few of their meetings and am hopefully going to be organising a fundraiser film screening for them in October as well as doing a bit of their social media. 

Those were the main groups and events I have been involved with but I also found a few others which include but are not limited to:
  • Oasis Down to Earth farm which is a small farm (literally in the middle of a housing estate) which operates mostly as horticultural therapy for an adjoining specialist learning difficulty school during the week and opens to the public at the weekend
  • Southampton Scrapstore - who take on leftover materials such as woodwork or craft supplies (that would otherwise have ended up in landfill) and make them available to their members for a small fee!
  • Fareshare - who take on food waste/donations from local businesses and individuals to distribute it to those in need such as children's summer camps combating holiday hunger!
  • The Eco-collective - an online collective providing wholesale prices for environmentally friendly and vegan products 
  • The Bitterne Veg Box co. who for just £10 will deliver to your door a week's worth of ethically / locally sources fruit and veg! - oh and did I mention they deliver it by cargo bike?!
  • Mu Trend Lab in the City centre which is a collaborative social enterprise currently maintaining a community garden outside their shop
  • Food not bombs who are a local anti-militarisation anti-food waste group
  • Aldermoor Community farm - whilst still on my list to visit, Aldermoor farm is a co-operative farm who grow fruit and veg using permaculture principles as well as operating under an ethical business model for the benefit of the community. 
  • Southampton clothes swap who organise monthly meetups where people can bring along unwanted clothes and swap them with other people - for free!
  • The Hub Cycle Works which is an amazing local bike shop who maintain the fleet of community YoBikes (Bikes for anyone to rent and use around the city) out of their own budget!
  • Clean Air Network and Solent Air Watch both campaigning for better air quality in Southampton 
Whilst this seems like a fair bit, I have still been doing a healthy dose of procrastination this summer - mostly due to the sheer number of Facebook events and groups I have joined!

Obviously, this is rather specific to Southampton but along the way, I learnt a lot about finding and getting involved with new environmental groups and networking. If this is the sort of thing you are interested in or you've moved to a new area and want to get involved with your community, I have a few tips that might come in handy!

  1. Read local notice boards - in cafes, in the library, bookshops, university/schools etc. (I went into various places in Southampton and just took pictures of all the leaflets that piqued my interest which was a really good way of seeing whats out there!)
  2. Like, Follow and Post -Facebook may be a deplorable business BUT it has been an amazing tool in my search for community activities this summer alongside other social media. In particular, the Facebook local app has been great as it lets me know whats going on in my area based on the sorts of groups and pages I follow on Facebook. Often, once you've found one or two, you can find other organisations or groups fairly easily through the 'recommended' or 'you might also like...' functions. 
  3. Be brave and put yourself out there! - I understand this isn't as easy for everyone because getting involved with new groups often means meeting lots of new people alongside putting yourself out there in different situations. Personally, I used my quest to explore my local community as a challenge to be more comfortable doing things on my own and interacting with strangers. I found it super rewarding and I certainly re-gained a lot of my confidence I'd lost in the past year coming to university. HOWEVER! Everyone is different and if this sounds a bit daunting to you for whatever reason, take baby steps! Bring a friend! Start with an online presence! Message people the organisers and mention you are a bit nervous and most likely they will be more than accommodating!
  4. Don't be disheartened if you don't find your 'thing' straight away - Sometimes the vibe just isn't right, you don't gel with the people or it's not quite what you expected...which is completely OK!! Just don't let it put you off finding other groups or events which you might totally love!!
To conclude, my main advice would be to just see whats out there and explore (vague and unhelpful I know). BUT... honestly, I've made the most of a fairly uneventful summer where most of my friends are in a different city to me by really making an effort to be a part of the community to help the environment.

The idea that we are all part of a local community is something so important but equally so undervalued today as we progress towards an evermore individualist society (Especially in big cities like Southampton). It's so easy nowadays to live your life without really coming into contact with these sorts of organisations which makes it easy to forget how much stronger we are together! Clearly, I chose environmentalism as my niche but these sorts of groups exist regardless of the cause or focus ... you just have to find them!! So if you take anything from this post, be it that we can achieve so much more when we work together and your local the community is where you can start!

As always, peace and love,
Bethany 




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cycling

7 things you can reasonably do to help the planet

Who's to blame? Individual vs. corporate action in the world of environmentalism.