Havant FOE Newsletter - April 2024

Havant Borough Big Green Week 8th-16th June

Our plans for the week are coming together but success relies on lots of local groups organising a green activity during the week, ideally involving swapping.

The Climate Coalition have produced action guides with lots of ideas and some great visuals as well as packs for schools – primary and secondary editions.

Visit the Great Big Green Week website

This is a poster we have printed to let people know about the Green Week. If you can display some, please let us know.

Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies: our Art competition

Please encourage young people to enter our art competition for Green Week. We want to encourage them to think about the wonderful insect life around us.

There will be prizes in different age groups and we aim to display the art around the Borough.

Visit the Beetles, Butterflies and Bugs – Art competition page

Our Annual Report

We held an AGM on 20th March and produced a summary of what we have been doing over the last year.

You can read it here

 

Meetings this Month

We have meetings planned on 10th and 24th April at 7 pm to plan events. We also have a meeting planned on Monday 8th at 4 pm to help sort out the programme for our Green Week together.

These meetings will be on Zoom – just email us if you’d like the link.

In addition, we are incited to the South-East Regional Groups Get-Together for FOE on Wednesday 17th  from 7 pm to 8.15 This time we’ll be joined by special guest speaker, Finnian Murtagh, International Activism Officer at Friends of the Earth. Fin will talk about international solidarity work, our sister organisations and the Planet Over Profit campaign.

You’ll have a chance to discuss what your group can do this year in support of this important work.

This is the link to sign in and receive the Zoom link

Lots of training sessions from Friends of the Earth

Don’t forget that FOE nationally run lots of online meetings and you can find them on the FOE Training and Events webpage.

Tournerbury Wedding Venue

Tournerbury Woods on Hayling Island Is an ancient privately owned woodland, one of only two large woods on Hayling Island.  It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and lies within the AONB (now National Landscape), a Special Protection area and a European level 3 Chichester & Langstone Harbours Ramsar site.

Despite this, the owner has developed the site as a Wedding Venue over several years, without planning permission. After a series of failed planning applications, Havant Borough Council finally granted planning permission for the Venue last year, despite objections from Chichester Harbour Conservancy and many others.

The Hayling Island pressure group “Saving Tournerbury Woods” claim the landowner has been damaging the SSSI, and they claim the planning decision was unlawful, and are seeking a Judicial Review, due for verbal presentation in May.

You can find out more about it here

Election Toolkit

The South East Climate Alliance have produced this really useful Election Toolkit providing a simple guide to four of the national campaigns that have been launched recently to get climate onto the election agenda. It summarises their aims and approach, and explains how can you get involved.

Switched on Business

Portsmouth City Council has a new hub of resources called Switched on Business, designed to help businesses of all shapes and sizes save money, apply for funding, save energy, and cut carbon emissions.

Funding opportunities are regularly updated on this site as well, so make sure you keep coming back to check if anything is suitable for you.

Find out more here