Environment
Food Waste
So this month I've learnt more about food waste - how there's such cool schemes such as Basics Banks which partners with supermarkets to give food to the needed (i.e. homeless). I've also found out more about Food Not Bombs, which does the same, but collects the food from available bins (food chucked from supermarkets). There's an awesome opportunity to work the two schemes together!
Local Food
This month I received an email from Hampshire Fare asking Transition groups to create events for this July's Hampshire Food Festival - so it got me thinking - why not bring together the local farm shops across Eastleigh Borough and have a day of celebrating local food! So I set myself an awesome challenge to create the Eastleigh Borough Food Festival. As part of the event, I had the idea to run foraging sessions with The Urbane Forager, and also encourage a local pub to serve local food and drink on that date. I've contacted the farm shops and most seem interested, so hoping to hear if I can get the land space, so fingers crossed! Potential funding available coming March!
Energy
Another thing I learnt in January was just how much big energy companies are ripping us off, raising their prices ridiculously high, causing fuel poverty for lots of people. Fuel poverty is where people are paying 10% or more of their wage towards energy bills. I've had the awesome opportunity to be part of Friends of the Earth's Final Demand campaign - to raise awareness of this issue and get people to sign a petition that will get the Government doing something about it.
Buying Nothing New
At the start of January, I went to a talk given by Megan from Transition Southampton about how she bought nothing new for a year. This was really inspiring and I learnt a lot from this! So I have set it my awesome New Year challenge for the year - getting things from Charity Shops, Freecycle, Gumtree, Making my own things etc - with the exception of food, drink, health, etc. I have done fantastic this month, I've bought nothing new! One good example of this was that I needed a thermos mug for work to be able to get tea - one search on Freecycle and I found one! Not only did I find one, but it was literally 2 minutes away from my house! Awesome! Bad news though, our toaster has broken - luckily, I found one that hasn't been used before on Gumtree, so technically I can get away with it!
Climate
This January, I went along to a talk about the scientific facts of climate change, and found it really interesting - so the challenge now is to find a way of telling the general public...looks like it's time to set an awesome New Year challenge!
Sustainability Conference
I went to an awesome conference in Basingstoke where I learnt about engaging the community in living sustainably. I found it truly inspiring and really interesting - receiving talks from The Greening Campaign, Transition, and organisations working with the community to encourage them in sustainable activities. So many ideas were gathered and it makes it ever more exciting to implement these ideas into my community for 2012!
Transition
Every week I get more excited and inspired by Transition. I finished reading the Transition Companion, which was awesome - filled with loads of inspiring activities groups have done. This gave me the idea to create a Transition Open Evening - a chance for people in the local area to come along and learn about what Transition is. I've made a presentation that details ETNet's local projects and ideas of successful projects that other groups have run. I hope to inspire the local community and get us all working on a positive, fun, local environment. I've booked a hall in Chandlers Ford for a date in February, so fingers crossed it'll be awesome!
Cooperatives
This January I've learnt all about Cooperatives - how they seem like an awesome solution to working on community action - involving the people in the cooperative to work together to create a positive, community solution! I've learnt about community bakeries, community energy schemes, food cooperatives etc. At the end of the last year, I've been learning about recycling and upcycling items to make new items! I know of a few people who do this a lot, and thought - let's bring these people together in a community cooperative where we can create a positive solution - community workshops where we educate people about this. I've brought these people together on a Facebook group and we're having a meeting next week to discuss it, so we shall see! Exciting awesome times ahead!
Wellbeing
Drumming
Well I already play african drums so that makes me feel awesome! It was awesome to get back to playing again this January - as it had seemed like ages since I played last.
Reflection and Looking Forward
On the 14th January, my friend Lynn ran a workshop that taught us about how important it is to reflect on ourselves - asking questions such as 'How am I feeling?' and 'What do I want for the future?'. It felt awesome to go through these questions - before now I have never really taken the time to reflect on this, but I felt it was truly beneficial, and I really wish to keep doing this this year.
Skills
Knitting
So another awesome New Year Challenge I set myself was to learn new skills. Part of Transition is about reskilling the local community so we can become more resilient in the future, and this has inspired me to learn skills myself. Books for Free Southampton has started to run free knitting sessions every Sunday afternoon, so I went along and learnt how to knit - within 2/3 weeks I now know the basics of knitting, which is awesome! I'm properly getting into it now, so by the end of the year I may have made something!
Chutney
So last year I had an awesome opportunity to learn to make jam and marmalade, which was really great fun. For Christmas I got given a book on how to make chutney and pickles, so I set myself an awesome New Year Challenge to give this a go. A message to a few friends, and I found people to do it with. I made some last night, really pretty simple to do - and awesome fun to do it with other people! We made loads of chutney (aubergine, tomato, parnsip, chili, onion, garlic and spices), and pickle (cucumber and onion) - yum!
Crocheting
Since I was learning knitting, I found out about crocheting, similar to knitting. I'd seen my friend Bev do it last year, and was inspired to give it a go. She created a Beginners Crochet workshop, and I went along. It was awesome fun, and although I was really struggling, I managed to get help from other people that went along - I made a basic granny square, which was awesome! I will ensure I keep this up and keep learning!
So that's three skills I've learnt in January - pretty good going! =D
Time Banks
Seeing information on Freecycle about people listing their skills and hearing a woman talking today about setting up a time bank has inspired me! Time Banks are where people exchange their skills in exchange for time - so if someone helps someone with something for an hour, they are then owed an hour of time in another activity from the other person. So this is something that has awesome potential, and perhaps in the next few months, we'll have Time Banks set up around Southampton!
